On the other hand, the 25 and 50 percent formulas used in the 2000 Sino-Vietnamese Tonkin Gulf Agreement might put the oil rig back in China’s zone. It is doubtful that Hanoi or an international court would award these tiny features equal weight (as depicted in red) to major coastlines when calculating a new median line. Yet any settlement would also need to consider whether some of the Paracel Islands merit their own independent rights to a continental shelf. The CNOOC rig was on the Vietnamese side of a median line drawn between mainland Vietnam and China-a common option for delimiting maritime boundaries (indicated by the horizontal white line above). Beijing and Hanoi still have not deconflicted their overlapping rights to exploit the region’s seabed and fishery resources. Because of cramped local geography, the rig thus fell within the maximum hypothetical entitlements of both China and Vietnam under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. HYSY 981 was situated 120 nautical miles east of Vietnam’s Ly Son Island and 180 nautical miles south of Hainan. Foreign vessels were prohibited from venturing within one nautical mile of the rig. China’s Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) announced that the platform would conduct exploratory drilling in the area until August 15. The CNOOC rig straddled two hydrocarbon blocks that Hanoi had previously demarcated but not yet developed. By the afternoon of May 2, it settled 17 nautical miles south of Triton. The small flotilla was spotted near Triton Island in the Paracel Islands, which Beijing occupies but Hanoi and Taipei also claim. One diplomat told reporters that this prospect had “been one of worst fears” since the rig’s maiden voyage, even if “the timing caught us by surprise.” This was the first time, however, that the HYSY 981 had actually moved into Vietnamese-claimed waters. When the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) first launched this $1 billion deep-water drilling rig in 2012, the company’s chairman had lauded its virtues as a “ strategic weapon” for Beijing in the South China Sea. On May 1, 2014, Vietnam detected the Haiyang Shiyou 981 (HYSY 981) oil rig and three Chinese oil and gas service ships heading south from China’s Hainan Province. (Principal case study researcher: Jake Douglas) The full case study is also available for download here. This post summarizes one of nine case studies included in CSIS’s new report, Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: The Theory and Practice of Gray Zone Deterrence.
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