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The nation's biggest oil producer, PetroChina, is stepping up efforts to source oil reserves in China's offshore areas, and expects to locate assets in the China South Sea within the next five years, a senior company executive said yesterday.

 

"We are now doing the preliminary work to develop fields in the southern part of the South China Sea area, and major breakthroughs will be expected during the following five years," Hu Wenrui, vice-present of PetroChina yesterday told an oil and gas summit in Beijing. But he refused to elaborate on details.

 

If the South China Sea project comes along as PetroChina plans, it will be the Beijing-based oil giant's first deep-sea oil project, and could help the company secure more resources within its domestic reach.

 

A source close to the South China Sea oil development activities yesterday told China Daily that PetroChina had originally planned to sink a well in that area this year, but insufficient preparatory work might carry on the development into next year.

 

"But it will be no problem (for the company to dig the well) for the next five years," the source said.

 

The Beijing-based oil conglomerate wants to locate 2.5 billion tons (18.3 billion barrels) of crude oil reserves within the next five years, pinning hopes on new finds in both onshore and offshore areas, the senior executive said yesterday.

 

It is pumping huge investments to beef up discovery of new reserves across the nation, in order to offset the stagnant assets of its ageing major oil-producing fields such as Daqing.

 

Hu yesterday said it cost 13 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) for PetroChina to find every 100 million tons (730 million barrels) of new oil reserves.

 

The Chinese Government now allows its domestic oil majors, including PetroChina, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), to conduct both onshore and offshore projects, a policy different from previous limitations that only CNOOC was entitled to explore oil from the sea, an official from the Ministry of Land and Resources said.

 

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the State-owned parent company of Hong Kong-listed PetroChina, and US-based Apache Corp, on Wednesday signed an agreement to jointly develop the C4 block in the Bohai Bay Basin, a shallow-sea oil project.

 

That is the second partnership between the two oil firms in such project within the Bohai Bay region, which followed an announcement in 2003 made by both sides that another joint block in the Bohai Bay Basin producing an average 6,000 barrels a day.

 

Industry analysts said the aggressive offshore moves by PetroChina might pose a challenge to CNOOC's dominant position in developing the country's oil reserves in the sea.

 

The offshore oil producer's spokesman, Liu Junshan, was not available for comment yesterday.

 

A source last Friday said Canadian company Husky Energy would drill an oil well at a water depth of 1,500 meters in the South China Sea at the end of April. The well is in block 29/26, one of the twelve deepwater blocks of which CNOOC invited public bidding in 2002.

 

CNOOC produced 333,444 barrels of crude oil a day in its third quarter last year from China's offshore areas which include the Bohai Bay, South China Sea and East China Sea.

 

PetroChina aims to produce more than 107 million tons (781 million barrels) of crude oil and 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the year 2010, an increase of 1 per cent and 92 per cent respectively from last year, Hu said.

 

PetroChina's oil resources amount to 63.9 billion tons (466 billion barrels), 59 percent of the country's total figure, and for gas, the company's resources account for 68 per cent of China's total, Hu yesterday said.

 

The vice-president yesterday said that PetroChina also had plans to develop alternative energy projects to meet China's surging energy demand.

 

These new projects include the coal-bed methane development, coal-to-oil technology, power generation from wind and solar sources, Hu said.

 

(China Daily March 17, 2006)