This Day, That Year: May 28

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

An item from May 28, 1996, in China Daily showed the Liuhua 11-1 Oilfield, located under 300 meters of seawater, starting operations in the South China Sea 190 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong.

It was the first deep water field in the South China Sea originally developed by a joint venture of three companies－China National Offshore Oil Corp, US Amoco Orient Petroleum Co and Kerr-McGee Liuhua Ltd.

Since then, China has made remarkable progress in offshore oil and gas exploration. After years of development, China has mastered semi submersible production platform design, and construction and installation technology suited to the complex conditions.

In 2010, China completed its first deep-sea drilling rig, the Haiyang Shiyou 981. It showed that the country had the technology and equipment to carry out large-scale oil and gas exploration in the field. China is also building on its global offshore oil and gas businesses.

In 2012, the rig started drilling in the South China Sea. It has an operating depth of 3,000 meters.

In 2017, Blue Whale 2, the country's homemade ultra-deep-water semi submersible drilling rig, finished sea trials. The platform is as tall as a 37-story building with a deck as large as a soccer field. It is able to drill to a depth of 15,240 meters.

It is the latest version of the Blue Whale series developed by China Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore.

Its sister rig Blue Whale 1 was used in China's first test exploration for gas hydrate, or combustible ice, in the South China Sea in 2017.

The successful mining of hydrate marked a leap forward in China's efforts to replace conventional energies with renewable ones.

The South China Sea has an estimated 80 billion metric tons of oil equivalent of gas hydrate reserves. In all, there are 100 billion tons in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and in the South China and East China seas.

The country has an estimated 24 billion tons of oil and 16 trillion cubic meters of gas lying under the sea.

The resources are crucial for easing the country's rising demand for fuel, energy analysts said.