Shares in CNOOC Ltd, China's largest offshore oil producer, rose as much as 8.6 percent after its Canadian partner found a natural gas field big enough to supply China for four years.

 

The discovery in the Pearl River Basin is "significant" and may contain 6 trillion cubic feet of gas, Husky Energy Inc, the Calgary-based company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, said in a statement on Wednesday. That's equivalent to 7 percent of China's current reserves or 1.1 million tons of oil.

 

"The project is significant for CNOOC and we expect more such gas discoveries as the company acquires oil assets overseas," said Liu Yang, who helps manage US$1.8 billion of Asian assets including CNOOC shares, at Atlantis Investment Management Ltd in Hong Kong.

 

China is stepping up drilling for natural gas and boosting imports of the fuel to curb pollution from coal-fired power stations. A decade of rampant expansion has left the country with six of the world's 10 most polluted cities. The government plans to overcome smog that reduces visibility in cities such as Beijing, the capital, before the 2008 Olympics.

 

The gas find in an area known as Block 29/26, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Hong Kong, is the first deepwater discovery off China's coast, Husky said. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, neighboring Guangdong Province, the nation's manufacturing hub.

 

Foreign partners

 

Under CNOOC's exploration contracts with foreign partners, the company has a right to acquire, at no cost, as much as 51 percent of any discovery. CNOOC will exercise the option to take the 51 percent stake, spokesman Xiao Zongwei said, declining to give details.

 

China's oil fields have failed to keep pace with demand, which more than doubled in a decade, accelerating the shift to gas. CNOOC in May took delivery of China's first cargo of liquefied natural gas from overseas. The supplies will supplement fuel transported 4,000 kilometers through PetroChina Co's West-to-East pipeline to the commercial centre of Shanghai in the east from Xinjiang in the northwest.

 

"Husky has only drilled one well and they have hit the jackpot," Martin Haigh, head of Asian sales trading with Cazenove Asia Ltd, said in a report yesterday. "This is one of the most significant events in offshore China since the area was opened in 1982."

 

CNOOC shares climbed 6.8 percent to HK$5.60 at 3:58 pm in Hong Kong. Earlier, they rose as much as 45 US cents to HK$5.70. The shares have increased 31 percent in the last year, compared with an 11 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index. Husky shares, which closed at CN$63.20 on Wednesday, have risen 36 percent in the last year.

 

The gas discovery has the potential to boost CNOOC's reserves by 10 percent over the next two years should it be "proved up," Gordon Kwan, director of China oil and gas research at CLSA Ltd in Hong Kong, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. The size of the gas discovery equates to more than 40 percent of CNOOC's proved oil and gas reserves, he said.

 

CNOOC's parent, China National Offshore Oil Corp, holds another exploration contract in the area with Kerr-McGee Corp, a US oil and gas company.

 

China's consumption of natural gas may more than double to 220 billion cubic meters (7.8 trillion cubic feet) by 2020 from 100 billion in 2010, according to a November 12 report by the State Information Center's China Economic Information Network. Gas production may rise to as much as 150 billion cubic meters by 2020 from 100 billion cubic meters in 2010, it said.

 

Separately, CNOOC's gas project in southeast Sumatra started production with daily output of 55 million cubic feet and delivery expected to start in early 2007, the company said on Wednesday in a statement.

 

CNOOC, which produced 390 million cubic feet of gas a day in the first quarter, is the operator of the project and has a 65.5 percent interest.

 

"Indonesia is a big gas market, as well as a big liquefied natural gas exporter," Kwan wrote in a research note yesterday. "This project could help cement CNOOC's position as the biggest oil producer in Indonesia."

 

(China Daily June 16, 2006)