NO TA ON THIS THREAD PLEASE - (edit) and no pointless speculations either!
I've created this thread just to park stuff in that is only tangentially-related to SOCO's interests and doesn't relate to any of the specific assets.
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Chinese tub thumping or not these kind of reports don't help thoughts of adding to ones position at such apparently bargain basement levels (Around 300p as I write)
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Walker/2011/10/03/Walkers-World-War-in-South-China-Sea/UPI-23491317637140/?spt=hs&or=an
An ugly momentum is building in the South China Sea, where an official Chinese newspaper called last week for war against Vietnam and the Philippines to uphold China's assertion of sovereignty over the mineral-rich seabed, estimated to hold 7 billion barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The lead article in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times
Tuesday carried the headline "The time to use force has arrived in the South China Sea; Let's wage wars on the Philippines and Vietnam to prevent more wars."
There were three immediate triggers for the extraordinary reaction from Beijing.
The first was the successful move by the Philippines to arrange talks within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, excluding China, on cooperating and "clarifying consensual and disputed claims in the South China Sea."
The second trigger was India's rejection of Chinese objections to its own new agreements to explore for oil in Vietnamese waters, in partnership with Vietnam. Global Times had criticized the Indian approach, saying in an editorial that Vietnam's efforts to bring in foreign companies to explore for oil amount to a "serious political provocation."
India hasn't been intimidated.
"We will proceed with drilling at our block (in the South China Sea) on a schedule established according to our technical convenience," India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. announced last month, adding that India's foreign ministry had told ONGC the area where the oil firm wished to explore was "very much inside Vietnam's territory."
The third trigger was last week's agreement of Japan and ASEAN, at a meeting of defense officials in Tokyo, to intensify cooperation and consultation on the South China Sea. Japanese Vice Minister of Defense Kimito Nakae said the relationship between Tokyo and ASEAN has "matured from dialogues to one where Japan plays a more specific cooperative role" on a range of regional security issues."
