|
Chinese oil rig departs disputed S China Sea area
Reuters, HANOI and SHANGHAI, China
Chinese coast guard ships give chase to Vietnamese Coast Guard vessels (not pictured) after they came close to the China-owned Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig in the South China Sea on Tuesday.
Photo: Reuters
A Chinese oil rig has finished drilling near the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea after finding signs of oil and gas deposits and is being moved away from the area, more than two months after its deployment there damaged relations with Hanoi.
The Vietnamese Coast Guard said the US$1 billion rig was towed from contested waters around the islands, which are claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and China.
Xinhua news agency said the rig would be relocated off China’s southernmost island province of Hainan. It gave no timeframe.
The rig’s relocation could reduce tensions between the two neighbors after one of the worst breakdowns in ties since they fought a brief war in 1979.
Its movement toward Hainan is also likely to be welcomed by Washington, which had criticized China’s decision to position the rig in the contested waters as a “provocative” act.
Hanoi had said the rig was in its 200 nautical mile (370km) exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf, while Beijing said it was operating completely within its waters around the Paracels, which it occupies.
China National Petroleum Corp (中國石油天然氣, CNPC), China’s dominant oil and gas producer, said in a statement that the rig had “smoothly completed” its drilling on Tuesday and found signs of oil and gas. The next step would be to analyze the geological data and evaluate the layers of oil and gas, it said.
The rig is owned by state-run China National Offshore Oil Company Group (CNOOC, 中國海洋石油).
CNPC’s preliminary analysis showed “the area has the basic conditions and potential for oil exploration, but extraction testing cannot begin before a comprehensive assessment of the data,” Xinhua quoted Wang Zhen (王震), deputy director of the CNPC Policy Research Office, as saying.
China had previously said the rig was scheduled to explore the waters around the Paracels until the middle of next month. It was not clear why it had finished one month ahead of schedule, although Xinhua said this month was the beginning of the typhoon season.
Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo lit up with criticism of the move, with many users accusing the government of bowing to the US, underscoring the domestic pressure Beijing faces to be tough in its territorial disputes.
Yet the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the decision was made in accordance with commercial decisions and had “no relation to any outside factor.”
Beijing says the area belongs to it and as recently as Tuesday told Washington to stay out of quarrels over the South China Sea.
The rig was towed from its original position overnight to beyond what Hanoi considers its exclusive economic zone, Lieutenant-Colonel Ngo Minh Tung of the Vietnamese Coast Guard told reporters on one of the maritime agency’s ships in the area.
“According to our assessment and the speed at which it was moving, the rig has left Vietnamese waters,” Tung said.
The coast guard would stay in the area to protect Vietnamese fishing boats and the country’s sovereignty, Tung added.
On Tuesday, the same coast guard vessel was chased off by a group of Chinese ships in what has been a near daily cat-and-mouse routine between both sides since the rig was deployed on May 2.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung demanded that China not send any more rigs into Vietnam’s waters. The deployment has been a major test for Dung, especially when deadly anti-China riots broke out in Vietnam in May, triggering protests from Beijing.
A report by the US Energy Information Administration last year said geological evidence suggested the Paracel Islands did not have significant potential in terms of conventional hydrocarbons, but experts say the chance of making a major gas discovery near the islands is high because there have been several gas finds in the area.
source: Taipei Times
|
