Top Biz News

PetroChina in hunt for reserves

By Wang Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-15 09:14

Over the past 20 years, PetroChina and its parent firm CNPC have teamed up with as many as 46 overseas oil companies such as Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell to work on 16 oil and gas projects in China. These joint efforts have produced 22 million tons of oil and 2.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas so far, the Chinese oil firm said.

Covering an area of 560,000 square kilometres, the Tarim Basin represents one of the country's three big basins with oil and gas resources exceeding 10 billion tons. With 16 years of exploration and development, annual production in the northwestern basin reaches more than 10 million tons of oil equivalents, PetroChina said.

China has vowed to step up exploration efforts across the country to secure sufficient energy supplies to fuel its fast-growing economy.

PetroChina's domestic rivals Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corp both announced big gas discoveries in China recently.

Sinopec, also Asia's biggest oil refiner, last week said they aim to secure up to three medium- or large-sized natural gas finds with reserves of 60 billion cubic metres in Northeast China by 2008, after it made a major gas discovery in the region.

The Ministry of Land and Resources said on its website on Thursday that a gas discovery in the northern part of the South China Sea might hold more than 100 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

Xiao Zongwei, a China National Offshore Oil spokesman said on Friday it was the same well sunk by Canada's Husky Energy Inc and its reserve figures have yet to be verified.

Husky, which is participating in China's oil and gas exploration under a product-sharing contract with China National Offshore Oil, announced a major gas discovery in June in the Liwan 3-1-1 field in the Zhujiangkou basin, 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Hong Kong.

A Dow Jones report last week said Shell had submitted a development plan to PetroChina to help secure production in the largest gas field in Southwest China's Sichuan Province with 58 billion cubic meters of proven reserves.

Lim Haw Kuang, chairman of Shell China, declined to comment on Tuesday.