In a tit-for-tat posturing, India continued to hold its interest in the South China Sea-based oil field, notwithstanding the fact that hardly any proven oil and gas assets were identified for commercial exploration.
ONGC Videsh (OVL), the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), has once again secured a two-year extension to explore a Vietnamese oil block in the contested waters, the fifth since bagging the oil and gas block in 2006, to maintain the country’s strategic interests.
Sources said OVL has secured extension of its licence to continue with its exploration on Vietnamese deepsea Block-128 till June 15, 2019 even though the area suffers from poor hydrocarbon prospectivity and has not yielded a drop of oil in the past decade.
While company officials maintained that the fifth extension is part of their efforts to continue exploring hydrocarbon abroad to build upon India’s energy security, sources said this would help the country maintain its strategic interest in an area that China considers its own.
Vietnam also wants international presence in South China Sea to counter China’s interventions in the contested waters.
The extension of exploration licence also comes amid standoff between India and China in the Doklam area near the Bhutan-Tibet-India tri-junction for almost a month now after a construction party of the Chinese army came to build a road. Bhutan’s border is under the security arrangement of Indian forward forces.
Strategic sector experts view the extension of OVL’s licence to explore Block–128 more as an exercise to irritate the Chinese than to secure energy resources from the neighbouring country.
Chinese forces claim complete overarching oligopoly on South China Sea waters.
In fact, in 2011 Beijing had warned OVL that its exploration activities off the Vietnam coast were illegal and violated China’s sovereignty.
OVL applied for the fifth extension of exploration licence in May and got approval early this month.
Unlike the last extension of one year given in June 2016 by Vietnam’s national oil company PetroVietnam, this time the licence has been extended for a longer two-year period.
Source: Mydigitalfc.com
