NEW DELHI - Shrugging off Chinese warnings, India’s state-run oil firm ONGC said on Friday it would press ahead with long-term partner Vietnam in exploring the disputed South China Sea for oil.
The plans have stoked concerns that the exploration could exacerbate tensions between fast-growing neighbors China and India, who fought a brief, bloody war in 1962 over their disputed Himalayan border.
China has repeatedly said it has “indisputable sovereignty” over essentially all of the South China Sea, a key trading route, and that Beijing is opposed to any country engaged in oil and gas exploration there without its permission.
But India insists the area ONGC wishes to explore is well within Vietnam’s territorial waters.
“We will proceed with drilling at our block (in the South China Sea) on a schedule established according to our technical convenience,” a senior Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) executive told AFP, asking not to be named.
He added India’s foreign ministry had told ONGC the area where the oil firm wished to explore was “very much inside Vietnam’s territory.”
ONGC is expected to resume drilling next year at one of its two blocks in the mineral and fuel-rich South China Sea, where Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei also have claims.
The Indian statement came a day after Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said oil and gas exploration activities carried out by a foreign company without the approval of China were illegal and invalid.
