CNOOC's drilling platform on China's Bohai Sea Photo:VCG

China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) has been stepping up oil and natural gas exploration to ensure domestic energy security, with the gas output of the energy station in the waters off South China's Hainan Province hitting a record high of 20 million cubic meters a day, data from the company showed on Sunday.

Liu Shujie, deputy manager of the Hainan branch of CNOOC, said that the group has built the largest offshore natural gas production facility in the Lingshui, Dongfang, Ledong, Yacheng and Wenchang waters off Hainan. The facility has 16 offshore platforms, three land processing terminals and numerous pieces of subsea production equipment, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Aside from meeting gas demand for residential use and industrial production, the gas is also transmitted to places such as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Zhuhai in South China's Guangdong Province via a 700-kilometer subsea pipeline to meet the needs of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Liu said.

Deep Sea No.1, the country's first self-operated 1,500-meter deep-water gas field, located 150 kilometers off the city of Sanya in Hainan, started production in June 2021. It has been playing a positive role in driving up the province's economic growth. 

The gas field is able to supply 10 million cubic meters a day, which means it has the capacity to provide 3 billion cubic meters of deep-water natural gas annually.

In the first two months of 2022, the added value of Hainan's petroleum and natural gas exploration industry skyrocketed 1,264.2 percent year-on-year, according to the Hainan statistics bureau.

Over the period, China's output of natural gas increased 6.7 percent year-on-year to 37.2 billion cubic meters, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

With the growth of domestically produced gas, China's imports have fallen. In the first two months of 2022, gas imports slid 3.8 percent year-on-year to 19.86 million tons, according to the NBS.