China’s oil output ‘could rival Saudi Arabia’s’

Press, 2 September 1981, Page 9

China’s oil output ‘could rival Saudi Arabia’s’

NZPA-Reuter London Oil production in the Xinjiang region of western China could "dwarf Saudi Arabia,” according to an American oil man quoted in the “Financial Times” in London yesterday. A “Financial Times” correspondent, Tony Walker, wrote: “The (unidentified) visitor. sent in by Parker Drilling of the U.S. to douse a blazing oil well, his enthusiasm perhaps fired by the renowned Texan capacity for over-statement, was assessing the oil production of a vast sedimentary basin covering about a quarter of this province.".

Walker said that while the region almost certainly offered China its richest potential for onshore oil discoveries, huge investment would be needed to exploit the deposits of the Tarim Basin. Xinjiang also was one of China's main gold producers, had vast coal reserves, and had an important uranium deposit in the north, near the Soviet border. It had good prospects, too, as a cotton-growing region. Walker quoted an unidentified Australian farmer, advising on cotton-growing techniques near~Shihezi, as saying production could be

greatly increased if the Chinese built more reservoirs and dams for irrigation. Two problems facing China in developing the Xinjiang oil deposits. Walker wrote, were that the area had a “brutal” climate and was a vast distance from the main centres of population. China had made a start on exploiting the oil reserves, both on the fringes of the Tarim Basin and in a separate field at Karamay, about 300 km north-west of Urumqi. The Karamay field on the edge of the Junggar Basin produced about 3.5 million tonnes of oil a year and was by far the region's main oilfield.