ExxonMobil is the world's largest publicly traded oil company by market value. While Vietnam, an oil exporter and the third-largest oil producer in South Asia, began offshore exploration of its reserves in the 1970s, Hanoi only started in 2004 awarding offshore exploration concessions to a plethora of foreign companies, including those from the U.S., Canada and India with ExxonMobil receiving concessions from the Vietnamese government allowing it to explore blocks 117, 118 and 119 off Danang, an area that Vietnam insists is well within its 200-mile exclusive economic zone under international maritime law.
Apocalypse Redux? US Natural Gas Find off Vietnam Could Raise Tensions with China - FXstreet.com
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The South China Sea's offshore resources are currently claimed by six countries - China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, with competing claims overlapping in a crazy quilt pattern. Given the billions of dollars at stake for exploiting the undersea energy resources, it is unlikely that the contradictory claims will be resolved anytime soon, making Southeast Asian waters a potential flash point for conflict. The devil is in the details and in this case the United Nations unwittingly played the role of Lucifer when in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Part V, Article 55 defined an "exclusive economic zone" (EEZ) for countries with maritime frontiers as extending 200 nautical miles from a nation's coastline. Needless to say, in congested waters this clause was a subject of dispute, as nations raced to define their new offshore parameters, a contest only heightened by the world's increasing addiction to hydrocarbons.Apocalypse Redux? US Natural Gas Find off Vietnam Could Raise Tensions with China - FXstreet.com
