Oil row: Zaid tells a tale of greed and dishonour
By Stephanie Sta Maria, Free Malaysia Today
The federal government had failed to honor the original intention of the oil agreement by sticking its fingers into Petronas’ coffers, said PKR supreme council member Zaid Ibrahim.
Political differences and legal technicalities aside, Zaid said this is the root cause of the dispute concerning oil royalty.
In a recent exclusive interview with FMT, the former law minister noted that the agreement inked between Petronas, the federal government and the state governments stipulated the percentage of revenue that each party would receive from oil found in any of the 13 states.
Petronas would be awarded 90 percent, while the federal and respective state governments would receive five percent each.
Zaid explained that Petronas was given the lion’s share of the revenue so that the state-owned company could invest the money for the nation’s future generations.
“Yet the federal government dipped into its coffers to build the Twin Towers and Putrajaya.
“And in helping itself to more than its allotted five percent, the government dishonoured the intention of the oil agreement,” he added.
This, Zaid stressed, was the crux of the dispute.
“Not the stupid, irrelevant argument about territorial waters, which was not included in the agreement and had no relevance to the ownership of oil,” he added.
Zaid said the current government was attempting to find flaws in the agreement in order to justify its actions, “but none of it holds water when you look at history”.
“The previous governments paid Terengganu for 22 years not because it misunderstood the law but because it honoured the intention of the agreement.”
The former Umno leader also slammed the government for keeping a tight lid on the agreement, and urged it to disclose the document.
“But I doubt it would. Because doing so would mean exposing its abuse of Petronas,” he said.
