CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) is expecting to start benefiting at the end of next year from one of its overseas oil exploration investments when its oil field in Chad starts production, an executive said on Monday.
Fan Chen-hui (范振暉), who is in charge of CPC’s international exploration and production business, said that the Chad project received a 25-year permit for oil field development in July last year, and production should begin in December next year.
It would conclude a process of exploration and development that has lasted nearly 15 years.
CPC in January 2006 signed an agreement on exploration rights for an area totaling nearly 30,000km2 in Chad.
In January 2011, it said that it had made a discovery that it estimated would yield 9,800 barrels of crude oil and 35,000m3 of natural gas per day.
It was CPC’s largest discovery in the nearly four decades since the company began overseas exploration, Fan said.
The company has invested in oil exploration and production in 12 sites in five nations — Australia, Ecuador, Chad, Niger and the US — to diversify its supply sources, Fan said.
CPC’s operation in Niger could also start production next year, while Inpex Corp’s liquified natural gas project in the Ichthys gas field off the northwestern coast of Australia, in which CPC invested US$450 million, officially began operations on July 30, Fan said.
After production at the two sites begins, CPC is to meet an estimated 5.11 percent of its crude oil needs from the sites, up from the current 2 percent, which could help stabilize Taiwan’s energy prices, he said.
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