In a post on X, Zaid said if Sarawak demanded transparency from Petronas, the same standard for accountability must apply to the state’s own leadership.
“The RCI should therefore examine not only Petronas, but also how Sarawak leaders managed federal allocations, natural resources, and state-owned enterprises.
“At the heart of the commission’s work must be a simple question: why, despite trillions in oil wealth, are Sarawakians, especially rural and indigenous communities, still deprived?” he said.
Zaid added that Sarawak’s oil company, Petros, played a central role in energy projects.
“But who scrutinises Petros and why are details of its contracts opaque?”
He also asked who stood to gain from these new energy ventures: ordinary Sarawakians or a select powerful group and their business partners.
Zaid, a former MP for Kota Bharu, said that for decades, plenty of funds had been allocated to Sarawak for schools, roads, and clinics.
“Yet audits found leakages of up to 60% in state projects. Where did the money go?”
He also said the timber and palm oil industries in Sarawak generated billions in revenue but that indigenous landowners had seen their forests taken while poverty rates remained stubbornly high.
Senator Robert Lau had called for an RCI to investigate how Petronas utilised more than RM1 trillion in profits generated from Sarawak’s oil and gas resources.
He said Sarawak had sacrificed its resources for national development but remained one of the slowest growing economies in Malaysia.
He said while the national oil company was often dubbed the “golden goose” that sustained the economy, the real goose was Sarawak while Petronas “merely collects the eggs”.
He added that the RCI should look into Petronas’s management of the profits and recommend reforms to enhance transparency, fairness, and accountability in profit-sharing with oil-producing states.
Lau also said there was a clear imbalance depriving Sarawak of opportunities to industrialise, develop its local economy, build infrastructure, and uplift its people’s livelihoods.