PetroChina Co., one of the country’s leading oil and gas producers, had agreed to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region with total investment of 5.92 billion yuan (US$715 million), the company said Friday.

The deal marked PetroChina’s first formal agreement on an LNG project. It had previously signed preliminary agreements for LNG terminals in Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces, the company said.

However, it still lags behind its rival China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) in the country’s LNG business.

CNOOC, the dominant player in the country’s burgeoning LNG sector, has committed to build four import terminals in Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai.

Separately, CNOOC announced Friday it had started pumping oil and natural gas from two new fields in southern Bohai Bay.

Bozhong 28-1 and Bozhong 26-2 were producing 4,200 barrels of crude oil and 396,000 cubic meters of gas a day, the State-owned company said.

The fields were estimated to have a total reserve of about 67.95 million barrels of oil equivalent, comprising 31.90 million barrels of oil and 6.12 billion cubic meters of gas, CNOOC said.

(Shenzhen Daily November 15, 2004)