Chinese oil rigs have been sighted just 26 nautical miles (42km), from Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島), posing a threat to Taiwan’s sovereignty if left unchallenged, a brief published by the Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday said.
Pratas Island, 444km from Kaohsiung, is northeast of the South China Sea and houses a Taiwanese garrison.
The brief, titled “Rigging the Game: PRC Oil Structures Encroach on Taiwan’s Pratas Island” — referring to the People’s Republic of China — analyzed photographs and said that Beijing’s tools to pressure Taiwan now include oil rigs.
Photo: Reuters
“Oil rigs now constitute part of Beijing’s multidimensional campaign to undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty,” the report read.
There were 12 permanent or semi-permanent structures controlled by the Chinese state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) located near Pratas Island’s EEZ, it said.
“Intruding rigs that exploit natural resources without permission typify maritime gray zone operations conducted by the People’s Republic of China,” it said.
The rigs’ construction, extant since at least May 2020, demonstrates that China “rejects Taiwan’s jurisdiction” by building in areas where Taipei demands explicit permission to “construct, use, modify, or dismantle artificial islands, installations or structures,” it said.
CNOOC’s “jackets” — steel space-frame substructures of fixed offshore platforms that support the weight of an oil drilling rig — are capable of hosting infrastructure to facilitate military operations against the Pratas Islands specifically and Taiwan more generally, it said.
Structures primarily composed of jackets are easily modified and can be temporary or permanent, commercial or military, it said.
The rigs could accommodate surface-search navigation radars, other signals intelligence equipment and small-caliber guns, while the structure’s helipads could be used to launch attack helicopters, it said.
The persistent clouds over Pratas shield PRC movements and activities, making it difficult to monitor, and only countries with all-weather imaging and specialized human resources at their disposal can monitor the region, the report said.
CNOOC has deployed drilling rigs in Taiwan’s EEZ in a way that it failed to do in Vietnam’s, the report said, but added that it is both possible and essential to counter Chinese employment of dual-use infrastructure to undermine sovereignty.
While “cognizance of CNOOC’s structures and judiciously opposing them will not end all pernicious efforts ... it could slow or halt PRC progress,” while “silence and inaction, by contrast, risk encouraging further advances,” the report said.
Taiwan’s Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday that Beijing should halt its illegal marine drilling operations in waters around Taiwan.
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