On December 30, Cnooc Limited announced that its offshore gas field cluster surrounding Hainan Island had surpassed a cumulative production of 10 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2025, setting a new historical record and achieving a doubling of output compared to the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, which is of great significance for ensuring national energy security and supporting the high-quality realization of Hainan Free Trade Port's construction goals. The history of exploring and utilizing offshore oil and gas resources in the waters of Hainan can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s. Early petroleum workers once accomplished the feat of extracting oil offshore using a simple platform built with two pontoons, pioneering a new path of "exploring the sea for oil" for China's energy and chemical industry. By the 1980s and 1990s, with the completion and operation of China's first cooperative gas field, the Yacheng 13-1 gas field, Hainan began to emerge as a significant production area for offshore natural gas in China. Since the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, guided by the domestic "Seven-Year Action Plan for Increasing Oil and Gas Reserves and Production," Cnooc Limited has conducted in-depth analysis and research on the resource potential of three major oil and gas-bearing structures in the Hainan waters: the Yinggehai Basin, the Qiongdongnan Basin, and the Pearl River Mouth Basin. The company has continuously intensified exploration and development efforts, accelerated the construction of marine energy infrastructure, and carried out systematic research to tackle complex challenges such as deepwater and deep reservoirs, high temperature and high pressure, and low-permeability formations. This has led to the establishment of the country's largest offshore natural gas production cluster in the waters of Lingshui, Dongfang, Ledong, Yacheng, and Wenchang, comprising 19 offshore platforms, 3 onshore terminals, and several subsea production systems. "Maintaining high and stable production from existing gas fields, while promoting the orderly construction and commissioning of new projects, is our fundamental approach to boosting the overall output of the gas field cluster," said Li Yuexi, Production Department Manager of Cnooc Limited's Hainan Branch. The production management team has implemented multiple lean management measures, including deep potential tapping of mature "old gas fields" by applying successful practices like "depressurization production" to effectively enhance recovery rates, while also steadily executing new capacity plans to ensure the smooth startup of key projects like the second phase of the "Deep Sea No.1" and exploring scientific methods for the economic extraction of complex offshore reservoirs, thereby solidifying the foundation for long-term stable and increased production. According to a relevant official, thanks to the significant production contributions from major projects like "Deep Sea No.1," the output of Cnooc Limited's Hainan Branch has risen markedly in recent years. At the beginning of 2025, the company set the work target of "reaching ten million tonnes of production," coordinating and deploying the industry's best resources to support the implementation of the production increase plan. It formed specialized task forces and mobilized over ten thousand industrial workers across the offshore petroleum sector through labor competitions, working collaboratively in the Hainan waters to ensure high operational uptime for oil and gas wells and offshore platforms. To achieve the goal of leapfrog production growth, while fully focusing on upstream exploration, development, and production activities in the Hainan region, Cnooc Limited has also established a marine natural gas production, supply, and marketing network that serves the coastal areas of South China. It operates a multi-source gas dispatch decision-making system with a 24-hour scheduling mechanism, utilizing digital and intelligent tools like big data analytics for supply and demand management, enabling precise adjustment of upstream production based on downstream demand fluctuations and essentially achieving "full production and full sales" of offshore natural gas. After years of continuous development, Cnooc Limited has not only established a complete industrial chain in Hainan covering upstream exploration and development, downstream chemical and power generation, and professional oilfield services and marine engineering sectors, but has also facilitated the establishment of an academician workstation, two specialized marine energy laboratories, a deep-sea engineering research center, and the Hainan Petroleum Society on the island, creating favorable conditions for Hainan to nurture and develop a modern marine energy industrial system. In the future, Cnooc Limited will further leverage the advantages of Hainan's offshore oil and gas industrial cluster. Building upon the already established "Trillion Cubic Meter Gas Province in the South China Sea," the company aims to create a new pattern of resource development and utilization characterized by "multi-energy integration," enhance the scale and efficiency of the marine economy, strive to build the nation's largest offshore clean energy supply base, and contribute greater strength towards the goal of creating a "Maritime Hainan."
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