Crude production at Shengli offshore oilfield, Sinopec Corp's largest, has been disrupted by thick ice floes in Bohai Bay off north China, industry officials and state media said on Friday. Shengli produced about 554,800 barrels per day in 2008.
Sinopec, which operates mostly onshore fields along with some shallow-water wells in Bohai Bay, told Reuters that ice floes as thick as 30 centimetres "severely affected its offshore production." But a media official with the company declined to elaborate on the impact.
Sea ice floes are expected to remain massive in the coming week in Bohai Bay and the Yellow Sea on a continued cold weather forecast, Lin Shanqing, an official with the State Oceanic Administration, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
The ice floe disruption at Shengli follows power rationing during an early January cold snap that also cut into Sinopec's crude oil production at the same field. Xinhua News Agency reported earlier on Friday that some oilfields in Bohai Bay were forced to shut in as 40 percent of the sea water is frozen, the worst in nearly 30 years, which has also affected port activities and aquaculture.
CNOOC Ltd, China's largest offshore oil and gas producer that operates one of its largest fields in the same region, reported normal production "with no single oil well shut", a CNOOC official told Reuters. Dagang, an adjacent oilfield operated by PetroChina, was also not affected as its wells are five kilometres from the coast, a field official said.
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