The company denied that its employee made the remarks and demanded a correction from CCTV, saying anyone in that sea area could make comments or interrupt any conversations on that wireless intercom channel that is open to the public.

"There is a sharp contrast between the company's sensitivity regarding its image and its indifference towards China's oceanic environment," said the article.

The article stated that using modern detection analysis techniques it would be easy to judge whether the voice from the intercom belongs to a company employee, but "isn't it too serious for the company to fuss about such details, instead of addressing the problem that has lasted for three months?"

However, COPC used its crisis management skills quite well: it covered up the incident for as long as possible, it lied in July by saying that the spills had been "basically cleaned up," and, on the day of the clean-up deadline, it claimed that all leaks had been "completely blocked," the newspaper said.

After the lie was exposed, COPC said that the delay was caused by "unsound weather conditions," it said. According to the SOA investigation, the oil spill was an "inferior mistake" caused by substandard operations. The oil spills have spread to beaches in Hebei and Liaoning provinces. The spills have also been blamed for losses in the provinces' tourism and aquatic farming industries.

According to the company's website, ConocoPhillips holds a 49 percent interest in the Penglai 19-3 field, which represents about 3 percent of the company's total annual production.

The integrated energy company had about 29,900 employees, US$160 billion in assets and US$244 billion of annualized revenues as of June 30, according to the website.

China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), which has a 51 percent stake in the Penglai 19-3 oilfield but is not the operator, said late Saturday it will enhance supervision and assistance to COPC in handling the oil spills to make sure that it fully implements maritime authority's requirements, despite that the suspension will further reduce CNOOC's net production by about 40,000 barrels per day.

China's online community has condemned COPC for its negligence. Internet users have suggested that authorities take into consideration the amount of compensation BP must pay for last year's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when fining COPC.

By August 23, BP had paid out more than US$5 billion to victims of last year's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to the fund administrator. The payouts amount to roughly 25 percent of the US$20 billion fund, known as the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, set up following the April 2010 spill.

He Yu'ang, a blogger at sina.com, said the way COPC had acted was due to China's inadequate maritime laws, and the amount the company could be fined was too small so it chose to neglect the country's oceanic environment.

It is high time for the country to change the situation of the "high cost of law-compliance but low cost of law violations," said Fan Zhengwei, a commentator with the People's Daily.