TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Vietnam sends ship to track Chinese vessel patrolling Russian gas field
Chinese coast guard ships have sailed directly into energy exploration blocks operated or owned by Russian firms in Vietnam's EEZ about 40 times since January 2022, according to vessel-tracking data from Vietnamese research organisation South China Sea Chronicle Initiative (SCSCI), an independent non-profit.
Change Size
Vietnam Coast Guard 8005 vessel allegedly hits a Vietnamese-flagged fishing boat which was previously caught by Indonesian authorities for alleged poaching in Indonesian waters. The boat sinks and Indonesian patrol personnel Gunawan Wibisono guarding it is held hostage by the Vietnamese authorities. (The Jakarta Post/Source)
A
Vietnamese ship monitored a Chinese Coast Guard vessel on Saturday in a Russian-operated gas field in Vietnam's South China Sea exclusive economic zone (EEZ), data show - the latest Chinese patrol in a pattern stretching more than a year.
Chinese coast guard ships have sailed directly into energy exploration blocks operated or owned by Russian firms in Vietnam's EEZ about 40 times since January 2022, according to vessel-tracking data from Vietnamese research organisation South China Sea Chronicle Initiative (SCSCI), an independent non-profit.
China considers the area part of its expansive territorial claim in the South China Sea marked by a "nine-dash line," a boundary the Permanent Court of Arbitration found in 2016 to have no legal basis. It has built artificial islands and airfields on some reefs and islets in the sea to widespread concern in the region and in the United States.
Both Vietnam and Indonesia have asked China to avoid these areas in their EEZs - although the zones are not territorial waters and do not have sailing restrictions under international law. The patrols mirror Chinese Coast Guard activity elsewhere in the South China Sea, where such vessels have been used to assert territorial claims.
"China is asserting jurisdictional rights to seabed energy resources and (has) used its coast guard to put pressure on regional states," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Maps created by SCSCI and analysed by Reuters, using Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from those vessels, show Chinese ships last year followed nearly identical routes at least 34 times from Vanguard Bank, a submerged feature near the boundaries of Vietnamese and Indonesian exclusive economic zones (EEZs), to two Russian-controlled blocks 50 nautical miles (92 kilometres) away - at times getting close as 1 nautical mile from the main wells.
Russia's state-controlled Zarubezhneft is the operator and a shareholder of one the two blocks, 06-01; Russia's gas giant Gazprom is a shareholder in the other, 05-03, which is operated by a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, the country's state-owned fossil fuel company, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington.
