On Oct. 21 the National Energy Administration (NEA) convened a
medium-to-long-term work meeting on increasing oil and gas reserves and
production. The NEA said state oil and gas firms must shoulder core
responsibility for national energy security and, over an extended period,
materially increase production capacity. It ordered implementation of a ten-year
oil and gas exploration and development action plan, focusing on key oil-and-gas
basins and accelerating the creation of several national strategic oil and gas
bases. Companies were directed to scale up investment and operational activity,
intensify technological R&D, strengthen company–local coordination and deepen
corporate reform to raise reserves and output in deepwater, deep onshore,
unconventional and mature fields, aiming for stable-to-rising crude output and
rapid natural gas growth. The NEA oil and gas department outlined primary
targets and tasks for the next decade; CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC presented their
next-stage plans.
