CNOOC's Bohai overtakes Daqing as China's largest oil field
China's offshore oilfield cluster Bohai, run by
state-run CNOOC Ltd, has become the country's largest crude oil producer with
output hitting 30.132 million tonnes (602,640 barrels per day) in 2021, state
news agency Xinhua reported.
Bohai field, off north China, overtook the country's flagship
onshore producer Daqing, in northeast China, which pumped 30 million tonnes
last year as reported by state media a week earlier.
CNOOC Ltd, the listed vehicle of China National Offshore Oil
Company, produced 48.64 million tonnes of crude oil last year, up by 3.23
million tonnes, which accounted for up 80 percent of the national increment in
crude oil production.
Developed in 1965, the Bohai cluster fields are considered
marginal assets with relatively high development costs and poor crude oil
quality.
But CNOOC has in the past two decades sharpened its
exploration and development know-how, such as shortening the average drilling
time to under 10 days from 57 days, and has made several major discoveries like
Kenli 10-2 and Bozhong 19-6 fields.
In response to Beijing's call to boost energy supply
security, national producers - CNOOC, PetroChina, and Sinopec - have in the
past several years accelerated drilling more challenging terrains at home,
including shale oil, to make up for depleting mature fields like Daqing.
China, the world's second-largest oil consumer which imports
three quarters its oil needs, eked out a 2.5 percent increase in domestic crude
output in the first 11 months of 2021 over a year earlier, official data
showed.
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