<Li> Maritime boundary, land territory, and the islands of Sabah, including Ambalat, between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines . </Li> <Li> Maritime boundary and islands in the Luzon Strait between the PRC, the Philippines, and Taiwan . </Li> <P> The area may be rich in oil and natural gas deposits; however, the estimates are highly varied . The Ministry of Geological Resources and Mining of the People's Republic of China estimated that the South China Sea may contain 17.7 billion tons of crude oil (compared to Kuwait with 13 billion tons). In the years following the announcement by the PRC ministry, the claims regarding the South China Sea islands intensified . However, other sources claim that the proven reserves of oil in the South China Sea may only be 7.5 billion barrels, or about 1.1 billion tons . According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)'s profile of the South China Sea region, a US Geological Survey estimate puts the region's discovered and undiscovered oil reserves at 11 billion barrels, as opposed to a PRC figure of 125 billion barrels . The same EIA report also points to the wide variety of natural gas resource estimations, ranging from 190 trillion cubic feet to 500 trillion cubic feet, likely located in the contested Reed Bank ". </P> <P> The South China Sea is dubbed by the PRC as the "second Persian Sea ." The state - owned China Offshore Exploration Corp. planned to spend 200 billion RMB (US $30 billion) in the next 20 years to exploit oil in the region, with the estimated production of 25 million metric tons of crude oil and natural gas per annum, at a depth of 2000 meters within the next five years . </P>

Who claims what in the south china sea