The controversial truth about China’s new gas field

The news was seemingly big but the announcement curiously low key. Earlier this month, China declared that it had discovered what it described as the world’s first large-scale gas field in ultra deep waters and not far beneath the seabed. Lingshui 36-1 contained 100 billion cubic metres of gas, said the China national offshore oil corporation (CNOOC), and the data and plans to extract it had been approved by the ‘relevant government authorities’. It did not give a timescale or the precise location of the field – which it merely described as ‘southeast of Hainan’, China’s southernmost island province.

The reticence is because the gas isn’t China’s – at least not legally. It almost certainly lies in disputed waters close to islands claimed by Vietnam, which was violently expelled from the territory by China in 1974. Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea – an area of more than 1.25