China’s network of subsea pipelines has reached a total length of 10,000 kilometers, CNOOC reported this week. The news was hailed by media as a milestone in offshore oil and gas development in the world’s largest importer of energy commodities as it seeks to change that status.
China has been working to boost its domestic oil and gas production, both onshore and offshore, to reduce its reliance on imports, which, in crude oil, topped 12 million barrels daily earlier in the year. The pipeline network milestone is part of those efforts, with a view to an energy transition, no less.
“The total subsea pipeline length is planned to exceed 13,000km by 2030, further strengthening the country’s offshore energy transport network,” CNOOC said in its pipeline network report, as cited by the South China Morning Post. That network, however, will not only be used to transport oil and natural gas. It could at some point be switched to things like hydrogen and shale gas, per the SCMP report.
The densest part of the pipeline network is in China’s biggest offshore oil and gas producing region, in the Bohai Sea and more specifically the Bohai Bay, per CNOOC. The area contains 3,200 miles of pipelines, the offshore oil and gas developer said.
It was in the Bohai Sea that CNOOC recently launched a new project, as well. Dubbed Kenli 10-2, the field is the largest shallow-water deposit offshore China. The project in the southern Bohai Sea will see 79 development wells commissioned, including 33 cold recovery wells, 24 thermal recovery wells, 21 water injection wells, and 1 water source well. CNOOC said it expected the project to achieve peak production of about 19,400 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2026. The oil in the reservoir is heavy crude.
Also this year, CNOOC announced a couple of production startups in the South China Sea. At one of them, Wenchang 16-2 Oilfield Development Project, the company plans to drill 15 production wells, for a peak production of 11,200 barrels daily by 2027. The other recently started project was Phase 2 of the Deep-Sea No. 1 natural gas project in the South China Sea, boosting domestic output by 4.5 billion cubic meters per year. The project, China’s largest deepwater gas development to date, officially reached full capacity on June 26, according to CNOOC officials.
CNOOC, which is Beijing’s state energy major for offshore oil and gas development both in China and internationally, reported earlier this year that its net oil and gas production for 2024 was about 720 million barrels of oil equivalent—setting a record high for the sixth consecutive year. It also booked a profit jump of 11.4% for 2024, to $19 billion, on the back of the record-breaking production rate.
