Vietnam, China in dispute over offshore drilling (fwd)

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

Subject: Vietnam, China in dispute over offshore drilling

  	  				 
	 HANOI, Vietnam (Reuter) - Vietnam and China both laid claim  
on Monday to a potentially gas-rich area off the central coast 
of Vietnam where a Chinese exploration ship began drilling 
operations earlier this month. 
	 ``The Chinese are now drilling in our block,'' said a senior  
official at the state-owned oil and gas firm Petrovietnam, 
referring to a zone marked on Vietnamese maps as Block 113. 
	 A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing said the drilling  
rig was in Chinese waters and its activities were normal and 
above reproach. 
	 ``The seas where the Chinese exploration vessel is carrying  
out its operation are... within the continental shelf and the 
exclusive economic zone of China,'' the spokesman told Reuters. 
	 Vietnam said over the weekend that it had protested to  
Beijing over the drilling operation. 
	 It was not clear until Monday that Hanoi was referring to an  
area well north of the hotly contested Spratly Islands chain. 
	 Vietnam and China are among six regional claimants to the  
Spratlys and both also claim sovereignty of the Paracel Islands, 
which lie to the east of the latest area of dispute. 
	 The official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said Sunday that a  
formal complaint had been lodged with the Chinese embassy in 
Hanoi over the activities of the Kan Tan III rig. 
	 ``Vietnam demands the Chinese side stop the operation of  
the... rig and withdraw it from the exclusive zone and the 
continental shelf of Vietnam,'' the letter said. 
	 VNA said coastguards had repeatedly cautioned vessels  
accompanying the rig that they were encroaching on foreign 
territorial waters, but their warnings were ignored. 
	 Industry analysts said China had already sunk wells and  
discovered gas in Block 113, which is partly overlapped by a 
Chinese-designated block called LD28-1. 
	 ``They (the Vietnamese) have never raised a protest about  
this area before,'' one analyst said. ``China has done lots of 
drilling before in this area.'' 
	 The Petrovietnam official said Vietnam had already conducted  
a seismic survey in the block itself and had been planning to 
drill there at a later stage. 
	 Beijing oil officials said sovereignty over the area -- 64.5  
nautical miles off Vietnam's Chan Nay Dong cape -- was 
ill-defined and there was no mutual agreement where the border 
lay. 
	 Vietnam and China, although ideological allies, have a long  
history of mutual suspicion.