Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 20, 2002
China Sees New Progress in Tapping Oil
China has taken another stride in turning its central Asian region of Xinjiang into a major oil producer after Daqing in the northeast, with the building of a third oilfield with an annual production of over one million tons.
China has taken another stride in turning its central Asian region of Xinjiang into a major oil producer after Daqing in the northeast, with the building of a third oilfield with an annual production of over one million tons.
Sources with the Xinjiang Oilfield Company said the Luliang oilfield in the Junggar Basin has raised its daily production from 1,000 tons last June to the present 3,000 tons.
The oilfield was founded in June, 2000. It produced 420,000 tons of crude oil last year.
It now has 97 production wells, the sources said.
Luliang is the third oilfield in the Junggar Basin to produce over one million tons of crude oil a year. The other two are the Cainan and Shixi oilfields.
China is now the world's third largest oil consumer after the United States and Japan. It consumed 200 million tons of oil in 2001, including 65 million tons of imported oil.
With rising demand and dwindling production from oilfields in the east, China has been investing heavily in oil development in western regions, leading to the discovery of several big oil and gas fields in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and other regions.