by Francesco Guarascio
As sabres rattle in the long-lasting territorial disputes over the South China Sea, now considered by many to be the new Persian Gulf due to its potential reserves of oil and gas, the European Union remains a marginal actor in the region.
Diplomatic scuffles among the countries facing the South China Sea are nothing new. China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam have been in dispute over islands, rocks and reefs for decades with each country having a list of demands. "A spaghetti bowl of claims," as Theresa Fallon of the European Institute for Asian Studies refers to it. The interests at stake provide some explanation. The sea is a key transport route with half of the merchandise leaving and arriving in Asia passing through it. Some 85 per cent of the region's energy resources also pass through these waters. "Whoever controls it can control the future of Japan or Korea, among others," explains Fallon. The sea is also a key source of fish, which is a fundamental component of regional diets, and in the case of China also compensates against its increasingly polluted farmland production.
The potential huge oil and gas reserves recently discovered make the sea even more tempting for the energy-thirsty economies of the region. "By mid-2010, 180 oil and natural gas fields and more than 200 oil-gas-bearing strata had been detected in the South China Sea, with most located at between 500 and 2,000 meters. Though large oil fields have been found in the area, exploitation by Chinese oil drillers seems to have been slow," warns an article in the China's Global Times, a mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party. This alleged slow drilling activity may soon become a thing of the past, as China prepares to use a new deep-sea oil rig weighing over 30,000 tons. It is capable of extracting oil at a depth of up to 12,000 meters in the basin.
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