Texaco Petroleum Mij. (Nederland) BY and BHP Petroleum (China) Inc. have acquired exploration rights on a block in East China's Bohai Bay from China National Off-shore Oil Corp (Cnooc).
Contract Area 06/17 covers the 5,000 sq km Bo Dong tract in the 51,000 sq km bay. Water depths in the contract area range from 65 to 130 ft.
Texaco-BHP chose that acreage out of a joint study area that covered 9,000 sq km in Bo Dong and the 10,000 sq km Bo Nan area (OGJ, Jan. 14, p. 20). The joint study included reprocessing seismic data and evaluation of geological data. The block lies about 120 miles east of Tianjin.
Seismic operations are to start in first quarter 1922.
China began its offshore search for oil and gas in Bohai Bay and opened the area to international bidding in 1979.
Production is expected to peak at about 40,000 b/d of oil and 48 MMcfd of gas. Reserves are pegged at as much as 1 billion bbl (OGJ, July 29, p. 28).
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