Key points:
- A warship, maritime patrol plane and drone have been deployed to monitor the Chinese ship
- The Indonesian navy chief says the vessel has not conducted any suspicious activity
- The activity comes after Indonesia’s approval to develop the Tuna gas field in the Natuna Sea
“The Chinese vessel has not conducted any suspicious activities,” Indonesian Navy chief Laksamana Muhammad Ali told Reuters.
“However, we need to monitor it as it has been in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone [EEZ] for some time.”
Ship tracking data shows the Chinese vessel, CCG 5901, has been sailing in the Natuna Sea, particularly near the Tuna Bloc gas field and the Vietnamese Chim Sao oil and gas field since December 30, the Indonesian Ocean Justice Initiative told Reuters.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) gives vessels navigation rights through an EEZ.
The activity comes after an EEZ agreement between Indonesia and Vietnam, and approval from Indonesia to develop the Tuna gas field, with a total estimated investment of more than $US3 billion ($4.3 billion) up to the start of production.
In 2021 vessels from Indonesia and China shadowed each other for months near a submersible oil rig that had been performing well appraisals in the Tuna block.
At the time, China urged Indonesia to stop drilling, saying the activities were happening in its territory.
South-East Asia’s biggest nation says that under UNCLOS, the southern end of the South China Sea is its exclusive economic zone, and named the area as the North Natuna Sea in 2017.
China rejects this, saying the maritime area is within its expansive territorial claim in the South China Sea marked by a U-shaped “nine-dash line,” a boundary the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague found to have no legal basis in 2016.
Reuters