Sinopec, one of China's two leading onshore oil and gas
producers and the nation's largest oil refiner, has decided to
increase its natural gas output goal in southwest China's Sichuan
Province to three billion cubic meters for this year, company
sources said Sunday.
The figure is 25 percent higher than the original goal.
The revised output would be 36 percent higher than the company's
natural gas production in Sichuan last year, the sources said.
In 2006 Sinopec produced around 2.2 billion cubic meters of
natural gas in Sichuan, or 30.6 percent of the company's total gas
output of 7.2 billion cubic meters. That was also 12.3 percent of
China's total.
To achieve the revised goal, the company plans to start drilling
40 new gas wells in the coming 100 days and build an additional
annual production capacity of 189 million cubic meters.
Industry observers said the company has discovered large,
promising oil and gas-bearing geological structures in northern and
northeastern areas of Sichuan. The Puguang Gas Field is so far the
largest marine-origin gas field in China, with verified deposits of
356 billion cubic meters in 2006.
The company is planning to build a 1,702-km-long pipeline by
2010 to transport natural gas from Sichuan to the eastern part of
China, with a designed annual transport capacity of 12 billion
cubic meters. The cost of the project is estimated at 65.7 billion
yuan (US$8.6 billion).
The natural gas supply is for Sichuan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui,
Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Chongqing and Shanghai
municipalities.
Sinopec, listed in Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York and London,
reported 50.7 billion yuan in net profits last year, a growth of
28.1 percent on the previous year.
(Shanghai Daily June 18, 2007)