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China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) disclosed on Monday the unearthing of a major oilfield in the eastern South China Sea, with confirmed reserves exceeding 100 million tonnes.
Beijing’s Xinhua news agency noted that the Huizhou 19-6 oilfield sits approximately 170 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Shenzhen, a bustling hub in southern China’s Guangdong Province.
According to CNOOC, exploratory drilling has demonstrated promising results, yielding 413 barrels of crude oil and 68,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day.
Zhou Xinhuai, the state-owned firm’s CEO, lauded the breakthrough, describing it as one of several “consistent victories in tapping oil and gas resources across the eastern expanse of the South China Sea.” He underscored its significance for China’s energy ambitions in the region.
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CNOOC “has discovered 100-million-ton oilfields for two consecutive years, which creates a new growth pole for the continuous growth in offshore oil and gas production,” he added.
The US Energy Information Administration says the South China Sea is mostly underexplored because of territorial disputes, but most discovered oil and gas are in uncontested areas.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea as its own, but this is disputed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brunei.
CNOOC Chief Geologist Xu Changgui said the discovery was a “major breakthrough”.
“The discovery proved the largest clastic whole oil field in the northern part of the South China Sea in terms of geological reserves, breaking through traditional theoretical understanding,” he said.
China remains the world’s largest importer of crude oil, receiving 11.1 million barrels a day last year, according to US government analysis.
