After his trip to Singapore for the 32nd ASEAN Summit, President Rodrigo R. Duterte is set to visit the controversial Benham Rise, a seismically active undersea region in the Philippine sea, to deliver a speech there next week.
“Next week, I’m going to Benham Rise and I will make a statement there that nobody owns this place, including the continental shelf,” Mr. Duterte said in his speech at the 102nd Annual Communication of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the Philippines on Thursday, April 26.
According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the Benham Rise, which is officially called as the Philippine Rise, “is a natural submarine prolongation of the Luzon Island extending up to 318 nautical miles (589 kilometers), from the Eastern Philippine Seaboard facing the Pacific Ocean.”
The FSI explained that under Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states have a legal continental shelf of up to 200 nautical miles from the baselines, but the prolongation of the continental margin may extend beyond 200 nautical miles but not exceeding 350 nautical miles from the baselines.
“The Philippine Rise may contain the following seabed resources: (1) cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts located in seamounts on the area, which can contain very expensive minerals; (2) hydrothermal polymetallic sulfides, which contain minerals used in the aerospace industry; and (3) gas hydrates, which are believed to be a larger hydrocarbon resource than the world’s oil, natural gas, and coal resources combined,” the FSI also said.
It was reported last February that the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) had approved the Chinese names registered by Beijing for the five underwater sea features in Benham Rise.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it “communicated” with China regarding the matter.
“We have communicated to China that we understand that for them, it was purely scientific. But it’s not a good time to have Chinese names in some features because we have a live dispute in the South China Sea,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano said in a press briefing on Feb. 16. — Arjay L. Balinbin

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