A Chinese staff member works with Kenyans on an oil drilling-platform in Nairobi, Kenya. CNPC has formed a wide range of cooperation arrangements in Central Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. [Liu Chan Xinhua News Agency]

SHANGHAI - China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the nation's largest energy company by production, announced on Monday that its overseas oil and gas output had surpassed 100 million tons, with its equity oil and gas output topping 51.7 million tons, equivalent to the output of China's Daqing oilfield.

CNPC has been involved in overseas exploration for the past 18 years. It has achieved a wide range of cooperation arrangements in Central Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, covering the upstream, mid-stream and downstream aspects of the oil business, according to China Oil News.

CNPC's development of an "overseas Daqing" showed the company's development has entered a "brand new phase", it said.

Jiang Jiemin, chairman of CNPC, said the creation of an "overseas Daqing" is a great achievement for the company. Daqing is China's largest domestic oilfield.

Amid complicated domestic and global conditions, CNPC will continue to deepen its "go-out" policy, expanding the scale of its international oil and gas cooperation, Jiang told China Oil News.

"We will constantly increase the scale of cooperation for international oil and gas projects as a way to support China's economic development, energy security and social stability," Jiang said.

CNPC is set to realize 200 million tons of oil output from overseas projects by the end of 2015, accounting for 50 percent of its total output, to help meet soaring domestic demand.

PetroChina Co, as CNPC's listed unit, plans to spend at least $60 billion this decade on foreign takeovers, Bloomberg News has reported.

"This is obviously good news for CNPC as well as the nation's oil and gas industry," said Zhu Fang, deputy director of the information and marketing department of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association.

To explore overseas will help China's oil companies such as CNPC to lower costs by gaining direct access to resources, experts said.

With population of more than 1.3 billion people, China has to fuel the economy with huge amounts of oil and gas to ensure people are fed and employed.

But limited domestic natural resources are hindering this process. In Zhu's opinion, oil companies should put more focus on using resources in a wise way.

CNPC plans to continue rapid, consistent overseas expansion, and Canadian and Australian assets are its top priorities, Jiang said in October.

On Jan 3, PetroChina became the first Chinese State-owned company to achieve full ownership of a Canadian oil sands development. It agreed to buy out the stake of Athabasca Oil Sands Corp, its partner, in a newly approved project for C$680 million ($674 million), Reuters reported.

PetroChina is expected to start work on the project this month, which is scheduled to begin producing 35,000 barrels a day by 2014, at a cost of about C$1.3 billion. Eventual output could hit 150,000 barrels a day.

China Daily