Chinese Major Strikes Oil In Bohai Sea

China’s CNOOC has discovered oil in the Bohai Sea with the deposit estimated to contain more than 100 million tons of oil equivalent.

According to the company, the new field could produce more than 20 million tons of crude oil and more than 9 billion cubic meters of natural gas, Xinhua reported.

China has in recent years stepped up efforts to boost domestic production of oil and gas as its demand has surged, driven by the country’s fast pace of economic growth. These efforts have been led by state-owned majors such as CNPC and CNOOC.

“Bozhong 26-6…is the third oilfield discovery with hundred million tons of reserves in southern Bohai Sea after Kenli 6-1 and Kenli 10-2. It is identified as the largest metamorphic buried hill oilfield in China,” said CNOOC deputy chief exploration engineer Xu Changgui, as quoted by Offshore Magazine.

The chief executive of the company said CNOOC will continue to look for large-scale prospective discoveries in the Bohai Sea, off the eastern coast of China.

“The Bohai Sea has been one of the targeted areas of exploration for the Company. We will keep looking for mid-to-large sized oil and gas fields and continue to discover new momentum for offshore oil and gas developments.”

Last year, CNOOC announced what it said was the first offshore shale oil and gas discovery, in the South China Sea, holding an estimated 8.76 billion barrels of oil. The discovery was noteworthy because China’s shale deposits, at least the onshore ones, tend to be in geologically challenging formations, making their exploitation uneconomical for the most part, according to analysts.

Also last year, another state major—Sinopec—announced an even bigger discovery, this time onshore. According to the company, the Tarim Basin discovery could be holding as much as 1.7 billion tons of crude oil.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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