China Will Begin Searching for Oil and Gas at a Depth of 10 km
China is creating a new organization that will unite national oil producers and other state-owned companies to search for ultra-deep oil and gas reserves, as well as the production of other hard-to-recover reserves, CNPC said, whose statement was cited by Reuters.
This is in response to President Xi Jinping’s call to create “new productive forces” in the sector that will contribute to the country’s energy security.
In addition to CNPC and Sinopec, the country’s two leading oil and gas producers, the new body brings together seven other government groups, including China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, steelmaker Baowu, equipment maker Sinomach, Dongfang Electric Group and Minmetals.
The group will drill for conventional resources in ultra-deep wells that extend to depths of up to 10,000 meters in the Tarim Basin in northwestern Xinjiang, where CNPC and Sinopec are major players. It will also seek to exploit deep reserves of shale oil and gas from coal seams.
China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil and meets almost three-quarters of its needs through imports. China is investing billions of dollars to maintain domestic crude oil production at more than 4 million bpd.
Years of efforts by major state oil companies to drill deeper onshore and speed up development of offshore oil fields have led to production growth of 2% a year since 2018.
