State-run oil supplier CPC Corp, Taiwan (中油) expects to receive next month the first shipment of crude oil from its production facility in Chad, a company spokesperson said.
Since production began at the oil field in February, it has yielded 1.4 million barrels of crude, 1 million of which are being shipped to CPC’s Talin refinery in Taoyuan, CPC spokesman Chang Ray-chung (張瑞宗) said.
Given the lack of domestic fossil-fuel sources, CPC signed an agreement with Chad in 2006 for exploration rights, in an effort to help Taiwan achieve self-sufficiency.
After five years of exploration, CPC said that it found new oil and gas reserves and six years later, it obtained a 25-year license to develop the Oryx Oilfield.
CPC owns 35 percent of the oil exploration rights, while CEFC China Energy Co (華信能源) holds 35 percent and the Chadian government holds 30 percent, said Fan Chen-hui (范振暉), who is in charge of CPC’s international exploration and production business.
The oil field yields about 5,500 barrels of crude oil and 14,000m3 of natural gas per day, Fan said.
It is CPC’s first overseas oilfield operation in the nearly four decades since it began investing in exploration abroad, Fan added.
Maximum daily production at Oryx Oilfield is about 9,600 barrels of oil and 35,000m3 of natural gas, Fan said.
There is still plenty of room for CPC to expand production, he said.
After it receives the first oil shipment, CPC would evaluate global oil prices and decide whether to continue shipments from Chad to Taiwan, Fan said.
CPC has no plans to ship natural gas from Chad to Taiwan, as that resource is mainly being used to generate power at the oilfield, he said.
The company has invested in oil exploration and production at eight sites in five other countries — Australia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Niger and the US — with the projects in Australia and Ecuador now reaching the production phase, Fan said.
CPC is also assessing new investment projects, but would only invest after global oil prices rebound enough to cover the cost of oil production, he said.
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