China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer and supplier, has discovered new petroleum and gas reserves of over 1 billion tonnes in northwest China, the company said on Sunday.
A significant discovery was made in the Ordos Basin 7 oil source bed exploration, namely an additional proved original oil in-place of 358 million tons, an estimated original oil in-place of 693 million tons, which means the discovery of a billion-ton scale in the Qingcheng large oil field in the area, according to the firm's statement.
A total of 640,000 tonnes of oil will be produced in the oil field this year, with annual output in the near future expected to reach 3 million tonnes, the Chinese official news agency quoted Li Luguang, vice president of PetroChina Company Limited, a subsidiary of CNPC, as saying.
Petrochina also said on Sunday that some 740.97 billion cubic meters of proven shale gas reserves in the CNPC's Changning-Weiyuan and Taiyang areas of the Sichuan Basin have been explored, making the verified reserves amount to 1,061 billion cubic meters in the area.
The company plans to produce 7.7 billion cubic meters of shale gas this year and expand the output to over 10 billion cubic meters by the end of 2019.
By Gokce Kucuk
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr