IT LOOKS like an oil rig, but it may really be a beachhead. A Chinese drilling platform out at sea, in an area also , is the latest issue in a decades-long dispute over the South China Sea and its oil and gas resources.
On 1 May, China installed its Haiyang Shiyou 981 rig near the Paracel Islands, in the northern part of the South China Sea. Since then , and China has evacuated thousands of its citizens from Vietnam after violent anti-Chinese protests.
The US Energy Information Administration estimates that . “It’s pretty plausible there’s oil and gas in a lot of those areas,” says , an oil exploration expert at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, in Perth.
China lays claim to a swathe of the South China Sea. For its part, Vietnam says it has effectively ruled the Paracel Islands, and the Spratly Islands to the south, since the 17th century.
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The dispute could be settled by the in Hamburg, Germany, but only if both China and Vietnam agree to participate.
This article will appear in print under the headline “Squabble at sea”
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