China May Be Drilling in East China Sea Near Disputed Islands, Japan Says
Japan said China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, may be drilling in an offshore gas field near a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea.
“There’s a possibility China is drilling as there’s been equipment transported that hadn’t been there before,” Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said at the lower house national security committee meeting in Tokyo today. “We cannot definitively say, so we’re requesting China to check and analyze it while we will also analyze to confirm it.”
Tensions have heightened since last month when a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese Coast Guard boats near the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Last weekend, demonstrators in the Chinese province of Sichuan forced the early closure of an Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. store and smashed windows at an Ito-Yokado supermarket.
China’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the allegation. Jiang Yongzhi, a Beijing-based spokesman for Cnooc Ltd., the country’s biggest offshore energy explorer, declined to comment.
Japan said earlier this year it will bring the dispute with China over developing the Chunxiao gas field to an international maritime tribunal. Asia’s two biggest economies have failed to implement an agreement signed in June 2008 to jointly develop the field, known as Shirakaba in Japan.
China and Japan are working on arranging a summit between Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at this month’s meeting of Asian leaders in Hanoi.
To contact the reporters on this story: Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net; John Duce in Hong Kong at Jduce1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net.
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