China National Offshore Oil Co. (CNOOC) and two other companies had jointly signed two new production-sharing contracts to explore offshore oil and natural gas fields in Myanmar.

CNOOC's Myanmar Ltd., China Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corp. and Golden Aaron Pte. Ltd. of Singapore had signed contracts with Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise to explore two fields in the Southeast Asian country, Xinhua said.

Under the agreements, oil and gas exploration will be carried out at a 10,000-sqkm field in Rakhine state and a 15,530-sqkm field in southern Tanintharyi.

About two months ago, these companies signed a similar agreement to explore a 7,760-skqm onshore field in Rakhine state.

The report said Myanmar had 19 onshore and three major offshore oil and gas fields, with a total of 2.46 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves and 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves.

Last year, Myanmar produced 9.79 billion cubic meters of gas and 7.2 million barrels of crude oil, and exported 6.45 billion cubic meters of gas with a turnover of US$655 million.

Xinhua's report came one day after CNOOC reported its sales agreement with Indonesia's national power company.

Under the contract, CNOOC and other members of the Offshore Southeast Sumatra Production Sharing Contract would sell gas to P.T. Perusahann Listrik Negara from 2006 to 2018, CNOOC said in a statement Tuesday.

CNOOC is the operator of the contract with a 65.3 percent stake.

The daily supply would be 80 billion British thermal units and the natural gas would be produced mainly from fields in the Zelda and Banuwati areas and supplied to the plant through a subsea pipeline, the company said.

In a separate statement, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) had signed a US$22 million contract for a project to build nine oil product storage tanks in Mozambique.

The total volume of the nine tanks would be 100,000 cubic meters, and construction was expected to be completed in 14 months, the ministry said.

CNPC, the parent company of PetroChina Co., is the country's largest oil firm.

Source: Shenzhen Daily-Agencies