SYDNEY/JAKARTA • China told Indonesia to stop drilling for oil and natural gas in maritime territory that both countries regard as their own during a months-long standoff in the South China Sea earlier this year, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The unprecedented demand, which has not been reported, elevated tensions over natural resources between the two sides in a volatile area of global strategic and economic importance.
One letter from Chinese diplomats to Indonesia's foreign ministry clearly told the country to halt drilling at a temporary offshore rig as it was taking place in Chinese territory, said Mr Muhammad Farhan, an Indonesian lawmaker who belongs to Parliament's national security committee.
"Our reply was very firm, that we are not going to stop the drilling because it is our sovereign right," he told Reuters.
Three other people confirmed the letter. Two of them said China made repeated demands that Indonesia stop drilling.
Indonesia says the southern end of the South China Sea is its exclusive economic zone under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and named the area as the North Natuna Sea in 2017.
Beijing objected to the name change and insists the waterway is within its expansive territorial claim in the South China Sea that it marks with a U-shaped "nine-dash line", a boundary found to have no legal basis by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in 2016.
"It (the letter) was a bit threatening because it was the first effort by China's diplomats to push their nine-dash line agenda against our rights under the Law of the Sea," Mr Farhan said.
China is Indonesia's biggest trade partner and second-largest source of investment, making it a key part of Indonesia's ambition to become a top-tier economy. Its leaders kept quiet about the matter to avoid conflict or a diplomatic spat with China, said Mr Farhan and two of the other people.
Indonesia has not made any formal claim to areas of the South China Sea under UN rules, believing that the extent of its waters is already clearly set by international law.
Mr Farhan said that China, in a separate letter, also protested against the predominantly land-based Garuda Shield military exercises in August, which took place during the stand-off.
The exercises, involving 4,500 troops from the United States and Indonesia, have been a regular event since 2009.
This was China's first protest against the drills, according to Mr Farhan. "The Chinese government was expressing their concern about the security stability in the area," he said.
Within days of the Noble Clyde Boudreaux semi-submersible rig arriving at the Tuna Block in the Natuna Sea to drill two appraisal wells on June 30, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel was at the scene, according to ship movement data. It was soon joined by an Indonesian Coast Guard vessel.
Over the next four months, ships from both sides shadowed one another, often coming within one nautical mile of each other, based on an analysis of ship identification data and satellite imagery by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (Amti), run by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Data and images reviewed by Amti and the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative (IOJI), a think-tank, show that a Chinese research ship, Haiyang Dizhi 10, arrived in the area in late August. It spent most of the next seven weeks moving slowly in a grid pattern of the adjacent D-Alpha Block, an oil and gas reserve valued at US$500 billion (S$681.8 billion).
"Based on the pattern of movement, nature and ownership of the vessel, it looked like it was conducting a scientific survey," said IOJI researcher Jeremia Humolong.
On Sept 25, the US aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan came within seven nautical miles of the Tuna Block drilling rig. Four Chinese warships were also deployed to the area.
REUTERS
