Binding of SCS -West Philippines Sea Code Conduct Pushed Philippines - China

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said China is pushing for a legally binding code of conduct in the South China Sea, a move that may reduce confrontations in the waters claimed by several countries.

China wants clear rules for operating in the seas that go further than the non-binding guidelines they agreed to at a July meeting with Southeast Asian nations in Bali, Indonesia, Aquino said after meeting with President Hu Jintao. China’s official Xinhua News Agency cited the Chinese leader as saying disputes in the waters should be resolved peacefully.

“It’s significant that they will be pushing for that code,” Aquino told reporters in Beijing last night. “Not just as a statement of principle, but rather a binding agreement as to how each and every party in the dispute will conduct themselves.”

China has used patrol vessels in recent months to thwart efforts by Vietnam and the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, to explore for oil and gas in the South China Sea. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in July that increased confrontations in the area are a threat to sea lanes that are “absolutely essential” to world trade.

“I don’t think China is going to make such a major concession anytime in the near future,” said Arthur Ding, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations in Taiwan. “Minor friction is likely to continue.”

Indian Entering Spratlys Sea

India’s Foreign Ministry denied the report that said a Chinese warship confronted an Indian navy vessel after it left Vietnamese waters in the South China Sea in late July. A caller identifying himself as “Chinese Navy” contacted India’s INS Airavat and stated “you are entering Chinese waters,” the ministry said.

“No ship or aircraft was visible from INS Airavat, which proceeded on her onward journey as scheduled,” the statement said, adding that the incident took place 45 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coast. “There was no confrontation.”

Though there is a none appearance of any Chinese naval ship, India insisted the China must respect and observe the freedom of Navigation in the adjacent waters of Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Chinese bully hit not only to Vietnam and the Philippines but now to its economy and power competitor India. The action of China towards India will just only push to India to make a strong alliance with the ASEAN countries to deter the China’s ambition in controlling the neighbors’ sea.

China received no diplomatic protest over any naval incident, said Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu in response to questions about the report at a regular briefing today in Beijing. He said he has made inquiries about the report but has no information on any incident.

Chinese vessels in May sliced cables of a survey ship doing work for Vietnam, the second such incident in a month. In March, Chinese ships chased away a vessel working for U.K.-based Forum Energy Plc (FEP) off the Philippines.

‘Properly Handle’

“Previous to this, all of those incidents with us and Vietnam made people pause,” Aquino said yesterday. The sentiment in the meeting with Hu was that it’s time for “an actual code of conduct that guides everybody as to how to behave within these disputed territories.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told Aquino during a meeting in Beijing today both governments must “properly handle the disagreements between us.”

China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed in July to a framework for implementing a 2002 agreement on behavior in the sea. That document calls on signatories to avoid occupying disputed islands, inform others of military exercises and resolve territorial disputes peacefully.

China’s claims to most of the sea are disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. In a 1988 skirmish over the Spratly islands, China killed more than 70 Vietnamese troops and sank several ships, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Joint Development between China and ASEAN  might be possible

China is open to jointly developing energy resources in the sea, Ma said today. Vietnam and the Philippines have rejected China’s map of the sea as a basis for cooperating to exploit the resources.

The Philippines, with an economy about 1/30th the size of China’s, plans to boost hydrocarbon reserves by 40 percent in the next two decades to reduce its almost total reliance on imports, according to a department of energy plan. Mineral fuels accounted for 17 percent of total monthly imports on average last year, from 11 percent in 2000.

Vietnam’s domestic gas demand is set to triple by 2025, according to World Bank estimates.

Chinese studies suggest the waters sit atop more than 14 times estimates of its oil reserves and 10 times those for gas. The Spratlys now is named as the new Persian Gulf in Asia.

 

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Cebu 750 Million 1.5 Megawatt Gas Power plant will be commissioned in October

A P750-million, 1.5-megawatt power plant will soon rise in Bogo City after the Department of Energy (DoE) discovered natural gas that can be turned into electricity and power a small area in the city.

The gas power plant will be constructed in Barangay Libertad by Forum Energy Philippines, which will also process the gas and sell it to Desco, a leading provider of petroleum and geothermal power and services in the Philippines.

DoE Assistant Secretary Ramon Oca, who met with Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia on Thursday, said Desco will supply electricity from the gas plant to Cebu Electric Cooperative Inc., which supplies electricity to households in the northern area of the province.

“It’s a natural gas, another alternative source of power, which is cleaner,” Oca said.

Oca personally visited Garcia to ask her support for the project which will be commissioned later this month or early October. He also said that further exploration will be conducted in Bogo to check out other areas that could also yield natural gas deposits.

“Hopefully we’ll find more gas para ma-expand natin ang power plants…There seems to be indication that there are more,” Oca said.

The Libertad gas field was reportedly discovered in the late 1950s but was not developed. A testing program was carried out from 1993 to 1995 involving the drilling of seven wells, with one of these testing positive for gas.

In Alegria town, an international petroleum consortium led by a Chinese petroleum company has expressed interest to pursue oil exploration in two barangays to determine the commercial value of the reported oil supply in those areas.

China International Mining Petroleum Company Limited (CIMP) and Polyard Petroleum International Group Limited will be drilling two wells in barangays Montpeller and Madridejos, where pocket oil wells have been discovered since the early 70s.

Oca and executives of the two petroleum mining companies earlier met Garcia asking for support. Since 2009, the CIMP has completed the seismic reprocessing and interpretation and surfaced geological investigations of the area while remote sensing study is being carried out covering 180 square kilometers.

“Let's hope that they will find oil or gas of commercial quantity in these areas,” said Garcia. “It will have tremendous impact not just for the town, not just for Cebu, but for the entire country.”

Polyard will be using 3D technology for the petroleum exploration program to see if there is, in fact, oil or gas of commercial quantity in the specified areas of Alegria. Currently, pocket wells that produce oil can be seen in Montpeller, and residents have long been using the oil to power their lamps.

During the early ’70s, Garcia said the same group conducted seismic survey in the area but the project was abandoned because they found out that the supply of oil was not of commercial quality and the equipment they were using was not technologically advanced.

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Indian warship confronted by China in the Spratlys' West Philippines Sea

Class and type: Shardul class landing ship | Displacement: 5,650 tons | Length: 125 m | Beam: 17.5 m | Draft: 4 m | Propulsion: Kirloskar PA6 STC engines | Speed: 16 knots | Capacity: 11 MBT | 10 infantry trucks or APC | 500 troops | Complement: 11 officers, 145 sailors | Electronic warfare and decoys: Chaff launchers | Armament: 2 x WM-18 rocket launchers | 4 x CRN-91 AA (Naval 30mm Medak) guns, MANPAD's | shoulder-launched IGLA SAMs | Aircraft carried: 1 Westland Sea King or HAL Dhruv |

A Chinese warship confronted an Indian naval vessel in waters off Vietnam and demanded its identity, the Financial Times said on Thursday, amid regional concern over Beijing's maritime assertiveness.

The London-based newspaper reported that five people familiar with the incident said it occurred in international waters shortly after India's amphibious assault ship INS Airavat completed a scheduled port call in Vietnam.

Delhi confirmed contact was made with its ship, but rejected the suggestion of a "confrontation".

On July 22 after sailing 45 nautical miles off Nha Trang, the INS Airavat was called on an open radio channel by someone identifying himself as the "Chinese Navy", the Indian government said in a statement.

"You are entering Chinese waters," the radio caller said, according to the statement. It added that no ship or aircraft was visible from the Indian vessel, which proceeded as scheduled.

"India supports freedom of navigation in international waters, including in the South China Sea, and the rights of passage in accordance with accepted principles of international law. These principles should be respected by all," Delhi said.

A series of Chinese actions in the South China Sea have caused nervousness among regional neighbors -- particularly Vietnam and the Philippines.

China says it has sovereignty over essentially all of the South China Sea, a key global trading route, where its professed ownership of the potentially oil-rich Spratly archipelago overlaps with claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

Vietnam and China have a separate long-standing dispute over the more northerly Paracels archipelago.

The INS Airavat visited Nha Trang in south-central Vietnam and the northern port of Haiphong in the second half of July.

Vietnam's foreign ministry said it had no information about the incident, while China's foreign ministry spokesman said he had queried the defense ministry but had not yet received a response.

A source familiar with the incident told AFP it was "a typical Chinese approach", adding that Beijing's enforcement vessels try to assert "that this is their territory and what are you doing in their territory?".

In recent months, the Philippines and Vietnam have objected to what they said was Chinese harassment of oil exploration vessels and fishermen in the South China Sea.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July condemned acts of "intimidation" in the waters, where it says it has a national interest in free navigation.

A Pentagon report on Wednesday last week said China is increasingly focused on naval power, as it places a growing priority on securing strategic shipping lanes and mineral-rich areas in the South China Sea.

Chinese leaders have insisted their military modernization program is aimed solely at "self-defense".

China, Vietnam plan defense hotline

China and Vietnam plan to set up a defense hotline as part of closer military links, official media reported on Wednesday, in the latest effort to publicly ease tensions after a maritime dispute.

The two sides "agreed to promote bilateral defense cooperation" at their second annual security dialogue held in Beijing, the English-language Vietnam News reported after the weekend talks.

The newspaper said China and Vietnam would expand ties to "new fields", among them the exchange of military delegations, including military students, as well as establishing the hotline between their defense ministries.

It did not elaborate on whether the line would be for the ministers themselves.

A few years ago, the communist party secretary-generals of Vietnam and China also established a hotline.

And in 2009, the foreign ministries signed an agreement to create a similar link between the neighbors’ "leaders", although its status is unclear.

In the latest talks, involving Vietnam's deputy defense minister and China's deputy chief of general staff, Beijing said it would share experiences in United Nations peacekeeping, Vietnam News reported.

Hanoi has not yet contributed to UN missions but has expressed interest to do so.

The neighbors have a long-standing dispute over sovereignty of the potentially oil-rich Paracel and Spratly island groups, which straddle vital commercial shipping lanes in the South China Sea.

Relations sank to their lowest point in years in May and June when Vietnam said Chinese vessels twice interfered with its oil survey ships inside the country's exclusive economic zone.

Both countries then staged naval drills, and Vietnamese citizens took to the streets in a series of unprecedented demonstrations objecting to the Chinese "invasion", although recently Hanoi ordered an end to the rallies.

Vietnamese bitterly recall 1,000 years of Chinese occupation and routinely express dislike of China.

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