CHINA - PHILIPPINES COOPERATION

OGJ - The governments of China and the Philippines say they're moving toward cooperative offshore oil and gas exploration.

The countries have been locked in a territorial dispute over parts of the South China Sea.

The island nation won an arbitration challenge to China's claim to most of the sea in 2016. Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam also dispute the Chinese claim.

Last year, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte approved negotiations with the Chinese government over the possibility of joint exploration.

After a meeting this month with Philippine Foreign Sec. Alan Peter Cayetano, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, told reporters the countries will "in a prudent and steady way advance cooperation on offshore oil and gas exploration."

Cayetano said the talks yielded "very positive momentum."

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Earlier:

2018, March, 5, 11:25:00 SOUTH CHINA SEA OIL REUTERS - Any deal between the Philippines and a Chinese firm to jointly explore for gas in the Reed Bank of the South China Sea will be illegal unless China recognizes the southeast Asian nation’s sovereign rights there, a Philippine judge said on Monday.

2018, February, 7, 08:10:00 CHINA: THE WORLD'S LARGEST EIA - China surpassed the United States in annual gross crude oil imports in 2017, importing 8.4 million barrels per day (b/d) compared with 7.9 million b/d for the United States. China had become the world’s largest net importer (imports minus exports) of total petroleum and other liquid fuels in 2013. New refinery capacity and strategic inventory stockpiling combined with declining domestic oil production were the major factors contributing to the recent increase in China’s crude oil imports.

2018, February, 2, 12:20:00 HEAVY ASIAN DEMAND PLATTS - Asian demand for oil products will outweigh current and upcoming refinery capacity by 2025, Tushar Tarun Bansal, Director at McKinsey, told attendees at S&P Global Platts annual Middle Distillates Conference in Antwerp Thursday.

2018, January, 17, 23:40:00 CHINA'S OIL DEMAND UP 4.6% PLATTS - China's apparent oil demand is expected to rise 4.6% year on year to hit 600 million mt (12.05 million b/d) in 2018, with net crude imports to increase 7.7% to 451 million mt, according to a report released Tuesday by state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.'s Economics and Technology Research Institute.

2018, January, 12, 12:35:00 CHINA - INDONESIA DEVELOPMENT PLATTS - China's state-controlled oil giants are sitting on record-high cash pile of $35 billion and their free cash flow generation is close to double-digit yields, paving the way for more mergers and acquisitions along with higher oil prices over coming years,

2017, November, 1, 13:30:00 SOUTHEAST ASIA NEED ENERGY Access to modern energy is incomplete. With a total population of nearly 640 million, an estimated 65 million people remain without electricity and 250 million are reliant on solid biomass as a cooking fuel. Investment in upstream oil and gas has been hit by lower prices since 2014 and the region faces a dwindling position as a gas exporter, and a rising dependency on imported oil.

2016, July, 5, 18:15:00 SOUTHEAST ENERGY WAR About $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year though the energy-rich, strategic waters of the South China Sea, where China's territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.