BEIJING: State-run CNOOC Ltd, China's top offshore oil producer, has issued a tender inviting foreign firms to bid for oil and gas blocks in offshore areas, including the South and East China Sea, the company said.
CNOOC will offer 33 offshore blocks, with a total area of 126,108 square kms (48,690 square miles), for foreign participation this year, the company said.
Of the total, 25 blocks are in the South China Sea, four in the East China Sea and the rest in the Yellow Sea, it said. China issues offshore exploration tenders each year.
The current batch is set relatively close to the Chinese border, according to details given by CNOOC.
Relations between China and Japan, the world's second- and third-largest economies, have been troubled in recent years by a row over tiny, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
In the South China Sea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei are involved in long-standing sovereignty disputes over the potentially oil- and gas-rich Spratly Islands chain.
In May, Vietnam condemned as illegal the operation of a Chinese deepwater drilling rig in what Vietnam says is its territorial water in the South China Sea and told CNOOC to remove it, while China said the rig was operating completely within its waters.
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