Ku Li insists Kelantan gets 5pc oil royalty

(The Malaysian Insider) – Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has insisted that Kelantan is entitled to a five per cent royalty for oil extracted off its waters, saying it was time to “re-examine the relationship between the states and the federal government”.

The Gua Musang MP told a packed Stadium Sultan Mohamed IV last night that national oil firm Petronas was bound by law to give the money to states where oil is found, adding Kelantan was not interested in compassionate payments.

“Kelantan may be poor. But we are not beggars. We demand what is rightfully ours,” the Kelantan prince said to cheers and cries of “Allahu Akbar (God is great)” at the last night’s gathering organised by the state government over the oil royalty issue.

The PAS government had demanded the oil royalty payment from Petronas last year, after the Statistics Department revealed that Kelantan, together with Sabah and Terengganu, had contributed 62.5 per cent of the oil extracted in Malaysia

The Barisan Nasional-ruled federal government has insisted oil from the joint development area with Thailand was not from part of Kelantan’s waters and has only offered RM20 million as “compassionate payment”.

But Razaleigh, the founding chairman of Petronas, disagreed with the government’s move, saying the formula for oil royalty was first agreed with Sarawak and later extended to all states.

“If Sarawak is due her five per cent royalty, no less is Kelantan, by the same principle,” thundered the Umno politician popularly known as Ku Li.

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