Wei Jie

claudiamente@hotmail.com

CHINA National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has discovered a new oilfield — approximately 170 kilometers from Shenzhen in the deep and ultra-deep areas of the South China Sea — with an estimated oil reserve exceeding 100 million tons of oil equivalent, the company announced yesterday.

The discovery of the hundred-million-ton oilfield, located in the Pearl River Mouth Basin in the eastern South China Sea, holds considerable significance for enhancing national energy security by bolstering offshore oil and gas resource reserves, said Peng Guangrong, chief geologist engineer of Nanhai East Petroleum Research Institute, CNOOC Shenzhen Branch.

According to the company, the new oilfield is expected to produce an average of 413 barrels of crude oil and 68,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day.

The oilfield, named Huizhou 19-6, has an average water depth of 100 meters, with its discovery well drilling to 5,415 meters. “The discovery also underscores the enormous exploration potential in China’s near-shore, deep, and ultra-deep fields,” Peng said.

According to the geologist, discoveries of oil and natural gas reserves in China in recent years primarily come from the deep and ultra-deep layers, which are defined as depths below 3,500 meters and 4,500 meters, respectively. “The geological conditions in these layers are favorable to the production of light crude oil and natural gas,” Peng said.

Over the past 40 years, a cumulative total of 168 million tons of oil equivalent has been produced in the eastern South China Sea region, with the majority of extracted reservoirs concentrated at shallow and medium depths.

Zhou Xinhuai, CEO of CNOOC, emphasized that deepwater and ultra-deepwater exploration of oil and gas, characterized by rich resources yet to be fully explored, will be the main driver for growth in offshore oil and gas production.

He said that in recent years, the company has strengthened its research on exploration technologies for deep and ultra-deep areas of the South China Sea, achieving multiple breakthroughs in discovering hundred-million-ton oilfields for two consecutive years.

The Huizhou 19-6 oilfield is operated by Nanshan-based CNOOC Shenzhen Branch.