China's newly found oilfield of one billion tons

[tektra]

China's newly found oilfield in Bohai Bay has a reserve of one billion tons, or about 7.35 billion barrels, the largest discovery in the country over four decades, announced the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Thursday.
The oilfield lies in the Nanpu block of the CNPC's Jidong Oilfield in Caofeidian in Tangshan City, north China's Hebei Province, said the company.

The Nanpu block, partly offshore, covers an area of 1,300-1,500 square kilometers and is expected to produce light crude.

By 2004, the CNPC had discovered five onshore oil fields in the Jidong area with a total reserve of 735 million barrels and an annual output of 7.35 million barrels.

The company previously estimated that the reserve of the new oilfield was 2.2 billion barrels and the daily output would be 200,800 barrels in three years.

PetroChina, the CNPC's holding company, boasted Asia's highest profitability last year with 142.2 billion yuan (18.5 billion U.S. dollars) in annual net profit.

China's oil dependency, or net oil imports against oil consumption, went up 4.1 percentage points year on year to 47 percent in 2006, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Last year, the nation produced 183.68 million tons of crude oil, up 1.7 percent, and imported 138.84 million tons, up 16.9 percent. Its oil consumption (crude plus oil products) amounted to 346.55 million tons, up 9.3 percent.

It is predicted that China's crude oil imports will reach 160 million tons.

[tektra]

China's Bohai Bay may have reserves of 20 billion tons of oil, with half of them still undiscovered, said Zhai Guangming, an oil exploration expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Bohai Bay rim was estimated to have about 60 basins similar to the the newly found Jidong Nanpu oilfield, said Zhai, who is also the first manager of the Jidong Oilfield Co. under China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC),

Zhai's remarks were echoed by Xia Yishan, an expert with the National Energy Leading Group, who said, "Given the geological structure in the regions surrounding the Bohai Sea, more oilfields will be discovered".

CNPC, the country's biggest oil and gas producer, says the newly found oilfield, with a reserve of 1.02 billion tons of oil, will increase the company's oil reserves by 55 percent and its gas reserves by nine percent.

CNPC has plans to develop the oilfield, with the first-phase project, to be finished by 2012, yielding 10 million tons per year.

Output is expected to rise progressively to 25 million tons a year, making it China's third largest field after Daqing and Shengli.

Considering the environmentally sensitive areas near the Bohai Sea, the oilfield was expected to become China's first "green oilfield", with all discharges properly treated and waste recycled, said CNPC vice president Hu Wenrui.