Post by Bozur on Apr 2, 2005 16:40:44 GMT -5
Drawing the Line on Energy
Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency
The Ramform Victory, chartered by Japan, is performing natural gas surveys in the East China Sea.
An offshore gas production platform in the South China Sea off Indonesia. China is building a gas production platform in the East China Sea, a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: March 29, 2005
An offshore gas production platform in the South China Sea off Indonesia. China is building a gas production platform in the East China Sea, a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
Correction Appended
NAHA, Japan - Midway between Okinawa and China, the Ramform Victory, a Norwegian seismic ship, is performing routine survey work, trawling with long seismic cables and using sound waves to create three-dimensional images of oil and gas deposits. But nothing is routine when Japan commissions a survey of what is hidden below the contested waters of the East China Sea.
Chinese coast guard ships treat the surveyors as spies, radioing warnings to leave and shadowing the ship for days on end. On one occasion, the Chinese ships nearly collided with the vessel. Japan's trade minister, flying in a Japan coast guard plane, conducted an ostentatious survey, circling over the bright yellow gas production platform that China is building a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
Confronting the Chinese face to face, the trade minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, later sat in front of a Chinese negotiator, dropped two straws in a glass of orange juice, and, forgoing customary Japanese politeness, complained that China was about to "suck out Japan's resources with a straw." The seismic ship, he said, according to ministry officials, found that two deposits under development by China extend into Japanese economic waters.
In days of sharply higher energy prices, long-dormant border disputes have suddenly come alive for Japan, the world's second-largest energy-consuming nation after the United States. Galling Japan is a realization that large deposits of oil and gas lie on the nation's watery fringes. Long cocooned by these water buffers, Japan is suddenly bumping shoulders over undersea oil and gas resources with China, South Korea and Russia.
[In talks in Tokyo on Monday between Japan and China, the world's second- and third-largest oil consumers, Japanese negotiators again demanded that China share its drilling data or drop the project, news agencies reported. The Chinese side rejected the demands and repeated an earlier proposal for a joint venture.
[But calls are mounting for a Japanese-only project in waters of the East China Sea that both nations claim. On Friday, a ruling party panel urged Japan's government to invite Japanese companies to drill in the area, a call bolstered by the simultaneous release of a Foreign Ministry report that China conducted 22 "illegal" surveys of Japanese economic waters last year, triple the number in 2003.]
Tensions are also flaring between Japan and South Korea over a disputed island group. The Korea Gas Corporation announced in mid-March a 10-year, $225 million investment program to develop what the state-run company said was $150 billion worth of gas hydrate deposits, roughly equivalent to South Korea's natural gas needs for 30 years.
To the north of Japan, Japanese companies are investing about $1 billion a year to develop oil and gas reserves off Sakhalin, a Russian island that was half-owned by Japan until the end of World War II.
But in the fall of 2004, Asia's broadest economic shoulders, China and Japan, bumped over a pipeline to ship Siberian oil. Japan won the first round when Russia went for billions of dollars in Japanese financing to build the line to the Sea of Japan.
In response, the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, announced at a recent Beijing news conference that over the next 18 months, Russian oil exports to China by rail would increase by 50 percent, to 300,000 barrels a day. The Russian government and President Vladimir V. Putin, he added, "have made it very clear that first consideration will be given to China when they build the Siberian oil-gas pipeline."
Spurred by high energy prices, China is pursuing a new energy realpolitik. Entering the Americas, Chinese energy officials are running rings around the United States, exploring deals with Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela. In Northeast Asia, the fact that China now is Japan's largest trading partner is not stopping China from potentially draining gas from what Japan calls its exclusive economic zone.
"The exclusive economic zone is a microcosm of the Sino-Japanese rift," said Jeffrey Kingston, an American historian who directs Asian studies at Temple University Japan in Tokyo. "Japan won Round 1 on the pipeline. Now, China is getting increasingly desperate."
In the energy brinkmanship on the high seas west of Okinawa Island, China's $1 billion project is to pump its first gas in August, sending the fuel through a 300-mile pipeline to Shanghai. Compounding Japan's loss of face, Mr. Nakagawa told Parliament in February that the first 260 miles of the line was built with $120 million of Japanese development aid. He confessed, "It is truly regrettable that this sort of thing happened."
Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency
The Ramform Victory, chartered by Japan, is performing natural gas surveys in the East China Sea.
An offshore gas production platform in the South China Sea off Indonesia. China is building a gas production platform in the East China Sea, a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: March 29, 2005
An offshore gas production platform in the South China Sea off Indonesia. China is building a gas production platform in the East China Sea, a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
Correction Appended
NAHA, Japan - Midway between Okinawa and China, the Ramform Victory, a Norwegian seismic ship, is performing routine survey work, trawling with long seismic cables and using sound waves to create three-dimensional images of oil and gas deposits. But nothing is routine when Japan commissions a survey of what is hidden below the contested waters of the East China Sea.
Chinese coast guard ships treat the surveyors as spies, radioing warnings to leave and shadowing the ship for days on end. On one occasion, the Chinese ships nearly collided with the vessel. Japan's trade minister, flying in a Japan coast guard plane, conducted an ostentatious survey, circling over the bright yellow gas production platform that China is building a mile west of waters claimed by Japan.
Confronting the Chinese face to face, the trade minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, later sat in front of a Chinese negotiator, dropped two straws in a glass of orange juice, and, forgoing customary Japanese politeness, complained that China was about to "suck out Japan's resources with a straw." The seismic ship, he said, according to ministry officials, found that two deposits under development by China extend into Japanese economic waters.
In days of sharply higher energy prices, long-dormant border disputes have suddenly come alive for Japan, the world's second-largest energy-consuming nation after the United States. Galling Japan is a realization that large deposits of oil and gas lie on the nation's watery fringes. Long cocooned by these water buffers, Japan is suddenly bumping shoulders over undersea oil and gas resources with China, South Korea and Russia.
[In talks in Tokyo on Monday between Japan and China, the world's second- and third-largest oil consumers, Japanese negotiators again demanded that China share its drilling data or drop the project, news agencies reported. The Chinese side rejected the demands and repeated an earlier proposal for a joint venture.
[But calls are mounting for a Japanese-only project in waters of the East China Sea that both nations claim. On Friday, a ruling party panel urged Japan's government to invite Japanese companies to drill in the area, a call bolstered by the simultaneous release of a Foreign Ministry report that China conducted 22 "illegal" surveys of Japanese economic waters last year, triple the number in 2003.]
Tensions are also flaring between Japan and South Korea over a disputed island group. The Korea Gas Corporation announced in mid-March a 10-year, $225 million investment program to develop what the state-run company said was $150 billion worth of gas hydrate deposits, roughly equivalent to South Korea's natural gas needs for 30 years.
To the north of Japan, Japanese companies are investing about $1 billion a year to develop oil and gas reserves off Sakhalin, a Russian island that was half-owned by Japan until the end of World War II.
But in the fall of 2004, Asia's broadest economic shoulders, China and Japan, bumped over a pipeline to ship Siberian oil. Japan won the first round when Russia went for billions of dollars in Japanese financing to build the line to the Sea of Japan.
In response, the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, announced at a recent Beijing news conference that over the next 18 months, Russian oil exports to China by rail would increase by 50 percent, to 300,000 barrels a day. The Russian government and President Vladimir V. Putin, he added, "have made it very clear that first consideration will be given to China when they build the Siberian oil-gas pipeline."
Spurred by high energy prices, China is pursuing a new energy realpolitik. Entering the Americas, Chinese energy officials are running rings around the United States, exploring deals with Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela. In Northeast Asia, the fact that China now is Japan's largest trading partner is not stopping China from potentially draining gas from what Japan calls its exclusive economic zone.
"The exclusive economic zone is a microcosm of the Sino-Japanese rift," said Jeffrey Kingston, an American historian who directs Asian studies at Temple University Japan in Tokyo. "Japan won Round 1 on the pipeline. Now, China is getting increasingly desperate."
In the energy brinkmanship on the high seas west of Okinawa Island, China's $1 billion project is to pump its first gas in August, sending the fuel through a 300-mile pipeline to Shanghai. Compounding Japan's loss of face, Mr. Nakagawa told Parliament in February that the first 260 miles of the line was built with $120 million of Japanese development aid. He confessed, "It is truly regrettable that this sort of thing happened."