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Backgrounder: China's Oil Industry
The past five decades witnessed the constant expansion of China's oil industry, which now reports an annual output of 160 million tons, as against the 90,000 tons of the 1940s.
Daqing, China's top oilfield, has over 5 billion tons of proven oil reserves and has produced a total of 1.6 billion tons of oil since it was discovered in 1959. By the end of 2000, Daqing's annual output had surpassed 50 million tons for 25 consecutive years.
The oil industry gained momentum in China during the 1970s, when a number of oilfields were discovered, including the Shengli Oilfield in Shandong, Dagang Oilfield in Tianjin, Liaohe Oilfield in Liaoning and North China Oilfield in Hebei.
In 1978, when China opened itself to the outside world, the country became one of the world's major oil producers, with that year's output hitting 100 million tons.
Since then, oil exploitation has been shifted from the eastern to the western areas, and more oilfields have been found in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China.
In addition to the oil operations on land, a number of offshore oilfields have been found on the Bohai Sea and the east and west of the South China Sea.
The oil sector is among the first to open to overseas investors. Meanwhile, domestic oil giants, represented by China National Petroleum Corporation and China National Offshore Oil Corporation, have carried out cooperation with their overseas counterparts in tapping oil resources.
Experts here say that China needs to step up oil production through new technologies and international cooperation in order to meet the growing demand in the domestic market. Meanwhile, more efforts will be made to tap natural gas resources so as to fill the gap in oil supply.
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