The CNOOC said Monday that the
CNOOC 981, the China’s largest producer of offshore oil has made its first deep
water gas field discovery in the South China Sea.
The company stated that the Lingshui
17-2 gas field, is situated some 150 kilometers south of Hainan Island, is in
the east Lingshui Sag of the Qiongdongnan Basin.
It is believed an ultra-deep water
gas field having an average operational water depth of 1,500 meters .
Moreover, the definition of deep water
differs as how the technology develops. Presently, deep water denotes to
anything below 500 meters, while depths over 1,500 meters are considered as ultra-deep
water.
A manager with CNOOC Xie Yuhong ,
said the well would produce 56.5 million cubic feet of gas per day, which is an
equivalent to about 9,400 barrels of liquid oil per day. During the testing,
the amount is the highest regular flow of all CNOOC's gas wells.
However, the precise exploitation
reserves cannot be reported as the discovery needs to be confirmed by the
resources reserve authority.
A large gas field generally means
at least 30 billion cubic meters and according to Xie, the gas field could be
very large, given test results so far.
CNOOC chairman Wang Yilin, said the
discovery of the field opened a great opportunity to the deep water oil and gas resources in the South
China Sea. It also opened to the door of the huge examination potential of deep
water areas there.
CNOOC 981, has been operating in South China Sea since
May, 2012 and Lingshui 17-2 is their first substantial deep water discovery. The
rig costs 6 billion yuan (975 million U.S. dollars). The construction process
took 3 years to complete. It has a deck the size of a standard football field,
the rig has the capacity to operate at a depth of 3,000 meters and can drill as
deep as 12,000 meters.
China
is known to be the world's biggest energy consumer and heavily reliant on
imported oil and natural gas with 58 percent and 31.6 percent imported in 2013.
China has been working hard to find new sources at home.
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