China ships ‘increasing sea tensions’

HANOI: Vietnam accused a Chinese oil-surveying vessel and coast guard escorts of territorial violations by widening their activities after entering the country’s exclusive economic zone and operating within offshore blocks for three months.

As of yesterday, the ship called the Haiyang Dizhi 8 had made several passes through the foreign-owned blocks off the coast of central Vietnam after departing from the Chinesecontrolled Fiery Cross Reef on Sept 28, according to Marine Traffic satellite tracking data. At least two Chinese Coast Guard ships further south meanwhile have in recent days manoeuvred around a Singaporean-flagged support vessel in an oil block operated by Russia’s state-owned Rosneft Oil Co PJSC, the data shows.

“The Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 and its escorted vessels continue, and expand their operations within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, thus seriously violating Vietnam’s sovereign rights,” Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a Hanoi briefing on Thursday.

Vietnam, which shares a long border with China, stands virtually alone in the region as it pushes back against Beijing amid territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a region containing unexploited hydrocarbons that the US says could be worth $2.5 trillion (76 trillion baht). Tensions have been on the rise since July, when the Chinese stateowned surveyor first began studying the seabed of the southern block in the disputed South China Sea operated by Rosneft.