China to Invest Heavily for Tapping Offshore OilSpeaking at a symposium on development strategy of ocean resources of the South China Sea held on November 22 in Zhanjiang of south China's Guangdong Province, Zeng Hengyi, academician with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), indicated that China will invest 120 billion yuan in exploiting offshore petroleum in the next five years, striving to increase the annual output of ocean petroleum to 40 million tons.He pointed out that since over 70 percent of the world's oil and gas resources are deposited in ocean, the future development of oil resources will rely largely on the ocean. As far as China is concerned, the proven reserve of offshore petroleum in the past 20 years has increased by 16 times greater than that of the previous 20 years. By last year China's verified reserves of oil and gas had reached 1.8 billion barrels and the production capacity of crude oil has leapt by over 100 times. According to the development program of CNOOC, by 2005 China's offshore oil output will reach 40 million tons, seven oil/gas fields will be set up and put into service and three world-level projects will be established, namely China's biggest 0.8-million-ton ethylene project, China's first imported large LNL project and the largest chemical fertilizer project in China's Hainan Province. By PD Online staff Deng Gang |
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