Indonesia has deployed a warship to the North Natuna Sea to track a Chinese coast guard vessel operating in a resource-rich area. watersThe country’s navy chief said on Saturday an area both countries claim as theirs.
Vessel tracking data shows that the vessel CCG 5901 has been sailing in the Natuna Sea, especially near Vietnam’s Tuna Bloc gas field and Chim Sao oil field since December 30, the Indonesian Ocean Justice Initiative says. with Reuters.
Laksamana Muhammad Ali, the head of the Indonesian navy, told Reuters that a warship, maritime patrol aircraft and drones had been deployed to monitor the ship.
“The Chinese vessel did not conduct any suspicious activities,” he said. “However, we need to monitor it because it has been in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for some time.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) grants ships the right to navigate through an exclusive economic zone.
This activity comes after Indonesia and Vietnam reached an agreement on an exclusive economic zone and Indonesia’s approval to develop the Tuna gas field in the Natuna Sea, with an estimated total investment of more than $3 billion until when mining starts.
In 2021 ships from Indonesia and China concealed from each other for months near a well-regarded submerged oil rig in the Tuna block.
At the time, China urged Indonesia to stop drilling, saying activities were taking place in its territory.
Southeast Asia’s largest country says that under UNCLOS the southern end of the South China Sea is its exclusive economic zone and named the area the North Natuna Sea in 2017.
China denies this, saying that the maritime area covered by its expansive territorial claim in the South China Sea is marked by a U-shaped “nine-dash line”, a boundary that the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague deemed to have no legal basis in 2016.
