According to Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg, Petronas and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad or Petros will have a deal in a couple of days.
According to him, the agreement will include mutual recognition of both federal and state laws, Borneo Post reported.
“Just wait two more days. A document on the agreement between us and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will be released,” Abang Jo was quoted as saying.
For those who don’t know, Petronas and Petros supposedly already came to an agreement last December itself.
That agreement however, which was widely seen as favouring Petronas, was likely not much of an agreement, because negotiations and discussions had to continue even after that agreement was made, and today, according to Abang Jo at least, another agreement has been reached, and the outcome will be announced in a 2 days’ time.
Personally, I see parallels between Sarawak and Petros’s effort to get a bigger share of its oil and gas wealth from Petronas and Putrajaya, with the efforts of workers and trade unions to get a bigger cut of their company’s wealth through negotiation with their employers and management.
Workers and trade unions tend to argue that they have a right to a bigger share of the company’s wealth, because it is they who generated the lion’s share of the company’s wealth, but the owners and the managers tend to disagree, often by saying that the workers and trade union’s demand are unreasonable, and if they give in to the demand, the entire company will go bust.
Similarly, those on the side of Putrajaya and Petronas, are also saying that the Petros is being unreasonable with its demand, and if Putrajaya gives in to Sarawak’s demand, the country will pay heavily for it.
Personally, I think that if the RM 50 billion that the country lost due to 1MDB and heaven knows how much else we have lost due to rampant corruption in the country has not brought us down, I think we can take a hit from Petronas losing out to Petros and still remain standing.
Lets not forget that our country also suffered losses of RM 2.4 billion a day in the days of the covid lockdown. If we can survive that, I don’t see why we can’t survive Petronas losing business to Petros.
Besides, even if Petronas loses business to Petros, the wealth is still in the family, on account of Petros also being a Malaysian company. So a portion of the money will shift from West Malaysia to East, but east or west, in the end it will still be in the hands of the family.
As for the argument that only Petronas can handle the oil and gas wealth in the country best, while Petros being a newcomer, will not be able to do a good job at it, I am not sure about the merit of the argument. At the end of the day, this entire thing is about buying and selling oil and gas, which is something that everybody in the world wants. How hard can it be to sell something everybody wants? I suppose you can argue that Petros might not be able to make as high a profit as Petronas, but to say that Petros will not be able to make a profit at all, or that it will surely suffer a loss, and thus it is essential that Petronas continues to be the one that manages Sarawak’s oil and gas wealth, stretches the imagination too far to be credulous.
Also, business and money is just the minor aspect of the dispute between Petronas and Petros – the more important aspect is the state of relationship that Putrajaya has with Sarawak.
A big part of why the dispute between Petros and Petronas emerged in the first place is because East Malaysia is increasingly getting dissatisfied with its relationship with West Malaysia.
As it is in the problem in any relationship, East Malaysia has long been entertaining the belief that it has given too much and gotten too little by being in the Federation.
If all of us, both in East and West Malaysia, are interested in maintaining our relationship, then we are going to have to iron the dissatisfaction that any of us might have in the relationship, and part of ironing out the dissatisfaction that we might have in any relationship, lies in being able and willing to confront the problem, rather than forever sweep it under the carpet and pretend like everything is fine.
Conflicts are not necessarily a bad thing.
If you only have intentions to flirt with someone, then you can avoid having any conflict with them, but if you want to commit to a person in a long-term relationship, then you have to accept that part of the process of building a more perfect union with them will involve getting into disputes and conflicts with them.
I think it is delusional to believe we are capable of knowing the right way forward all by ourselves.
In this life, the way forward is often created by the conflict between two right minded, honourable and principled sides.
That is why in the courts, the judge doesn’t decide everything by themselves – instead they will let the prosecutors and the defence fight out a case, and wait for the right way forward to be created from the fight.
That is why we have the opposition and the government in parliament too – we do, because it is only if the MPs on both sides of the divide are honourable people, who have the capacity and the will to fight for what they believe in, that the way forward for the country can be created.
While I am not going to guess whether it is Petronas or Petros that is going to come out the winner in this dispute, when the result of the negotiation is revealed in a couple of days, I will say that I do believe that just like it is in the case of a dispute between a married couple, who wins or loses the dispute between Petros and Petronas is not important.
In the greater scheme of things, the question of who won or who lost in this sort of fights is as unimportant as the question of whether it is the defense or the prosecution that won a court case or whether it is the government or the opposition MPs that won a parliament debate .
Whether you are part of a couple, or a leader, or an MP and or a lawyer, winning or losing is not the matter.
What matters more is that you have a willingness and capacity to fight in a principled and honorable manner, for the sake of your duty and responsibilities, because it is only if you put up a vigorous, principled, honorable and spirited fight, that the best way forward will emerge.
So rather than see all the disputes, changes, negotiations and arguments involved in the Petros-Petronas issue as categorically bad, perhaps it is best to view it as something inevitable, and perhaps even necessary, to perfect the union that is the Federation of Malaysia.
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