China National Offshore Oil Company Limited (CNOOC Ltd.) announced Monday that its independent oil field in the Eastern South China Sea has come on stream successfully.

The oil field, Lufeng (LF) 13-2, is flowing about 18,000 barrels of oil per day from three horizontal wells. The production capacity of these wells is tested at 30,000 barrels of oil per day.

LF13-2 is located in the western part of Block LF 08 in the Pearl River Mouth Basin with a water depth of approximately 132 meters. The field is about 210 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong and 12 kilometers northwest of producing field LF13-1.

Major production facilities of the project include a wellhead production platform, a 12-kilometer subsea pipeline and cables. The crude will be transported to and processed in LF13-1.

LF13-2 is the first project developed by CNOOC Ltd. independently in the Eastern South China Sea.

CNOOC Ltd. holds 100 percent of interest of the field and acts as the operator.

The successful start up of the project has laid a solid basis for CNOOC to achieve its goal of producing 55 million cubic meters of oil and gas by 2010, said a senior manager with CNOOC Ltd..

So far, the Eastern South China Sea has seen its annual oil and gas yield surpass 10 million cubic meters for 10 consecutive years and has become the fourth largest oil field of the country.

CNOOC Limited, incorporated in Hong Kong, is a 70.64 percent held subsidiary of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China's largest offshore oil producer.

CNOOC Limited is the sole vehicle through which CNOOC carries out oil and gas exploration, development, production and selling activities offshore China and internationally.

Source: Xinhua