China’s first deep-water drilling rig has been put into service in the South China Sea. That’s according to the country’s largest offshore oil producer China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC.
The CNOOC 981 rig began operation at 9:38 local time, in a sea area 320 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong, at a water depth of 1,500 meters. It is the first independent deep-water oil drilling done by a Chinese company.
About 70 percent of oil and gas reserves in the resource-rich South China Sea are contained in sea areas with depths of over 300 meters. But until now, most of China’s current offshore oil exploration has been conducted at less than that depth.
China’s dependence on oil imports has always been a source of concern for the government, which has actively been pushing its oil and gas companies to explore existing reserves and branch out overseas.