Chinese national oil company CNOOC revealed its plans to invest RMB70-80bn ($10.3-11.8bn) this year to target a net production of 480-490 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE).
Image: CNOOC plans to use a bulk of its investment, at about 59%, on development activities in 2019. Photo: courtesy of Vlado/FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
CNOOC expects nearly 63% of the production to come from China and the remaining 37% or so from its overseas assets.
The Chinese oil and gas giant expects its net production for 2018 to be around 475 million BOE. For the previous year, the company announced an investment of RMB70-80bn ($11.1-12.7bn) while targeting production of 470-480 million BOE.
For 2020, it estimates the net production at 505-515 million BOE and for the following year, is looking to draw 535-545 million BOE.
The oil and gas major plans to use a bulk of its investment, at about 59%, on development activities in 2019. On exploration and production, it has allocated nearly 20% and 19%, respectively of its 2019 total capital expenditure.
CNOOC CFO Xie Weizhi said: “The Company will maintain its prudent financial policy and investment decision-making, and ensure the effective implementation of the capital expenditure plan to improve the overall performance of the Company.”
In the current year, CNOOC expects six new projects to begin production. Out of these two projects – the Egina oil field in Nigeria and Huizhou 32-5 oil field comprehensive adjustment/Huizhou 33-1 oil field joint development project in the South China Sea have entered into production.
The remaining four projects that are due to enter production this year are the Appomattox project in the US Gulf of Mexico, and the Bozhong 34-9 oil field, Caofeidian 11-1/11-6 comprehensive adjustment project and the Wenchang 13-2 comprehensive adjustment project, all located in Chinese territorial waters. The company expects all these projects to begin production as scheduled during this year.
In the Appomattox project, which is expected to have an average peak annual production of 175,000 BOE, CNOOC holds a stake of 21% through its subsidiary Nexen Petroleum Offshore USA. The company is partnered in the deep-water oil and gas project by Shell, which is the operator with a stake of 79%.
As far as exploration activities are concerned, CNOOC is looking to drill 173 exploration wells and acquire nearly 28 thousand square kilometers 3-Dimensional (3D) seismic data.