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CNPC oilfield sees year-on-year growth of 22%

By Xiao Wan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-14 08:07

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer, said Tuesday that output from its second biggest oilfield, Changqing, saw 22.16 percent year-on-year growth in the first nine months.

The field in northwestern China produced equivalent 22.59 million tons of oil. It is on course to meet the annual output target of 30 million tons of oil equivalent, CNPC said in a statement on its website.

This includes 11.36 million tons of crude and 14 billion cu m of natural gas, said the statement.

Sources with CNPC earlier said that one important task for the company in the next three years was to stabilize the output of some old oilfields and conduct the second round of development of these fields, including the company's largest oilfield, Daqing in Heilongjiang province in northeastern China.

Daqing oilfield has produced 2 billion tons of oil since its discovery. This is equivalent to 40 percent of the total oil China has produced in the past five decades. Last year, Daqing produced 40.2 million tons of oil, about a quarter of China's total oil output annually.

"We will try our utmost to keep producing 40 million tons per year for a long time in the future," Wang Yongchun, general manager of PetroChina Daqing Oilfield Co, a subsidiary of CNPC, told China Daily. "Improvements in technology will play a vital role in achieving this target."

Last year CNPC produced 108.25 million tons of crude domestically, growing for seven consecutive years, said a company report.

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The company's crude production in overseas markets rose to 30.5 million tons last year.

Under a three-year blueprint for the oil and gas industry from the National Energy Administration, China's crude oil output is expected to touch 198 million tons, while natural gas production will be 120 billion cu m in 2011.

The country will stabilize the output from oilfields in northeastern China and the Bohai Bay area, while speeding up development of fields in the Tarim, Junggar, Erdos and Sichuan basins.

China's oil production would see a gradual decline after 2020, according to a recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Around 64.5 percent of the country's oil consumption is likely to be met by imports in 2020, said the report. The gap between domestic consumption and production is the main cause for the increase in imports.