The mainland is a land and sea country, with more than 3 million square kilometers of sea and more than 6,000 islands scattered among them. However, due to various reasons, there are still contradictions between the mainland and some neighboring countries in the areas under their jurisdiction in the delimitation of maritime areas and the exploitation of resources. This is mainly concentrated in the South China Sea, which covers an area of 3.5 million square kilometers and 2.1 million square kilometers under the jurisdiction of the mainland.
It is rich in oil, natural gas, aquatic and mineral resources. Especially non-renewable resources such as oil and gas. Among them, the petroleum geological reserves are about 23 billion to 30 billion tons, the total proven recoverable oil reserves are 20 billion tons, and the natural gas reserves are about 21 trillion cubic meters, which is one of the world's four major seabed oil storage areas. The southernmost Zengmu Dark Sand Basin covers an area of about 300,000 square kilometers and has a sedimentary degree of about 15,000 meters or more, which has the geological characteristics of multi-layer oil production and multi-layer oil storage.
At present, the five countries in Southeast Asia, namely Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, are all drilling wells and stealing oil within the nine-dash line of the South China Sea, resulting in a steady flow of precious oil and gas resources. How much oil have these countries pirated in the South China Sea?
1. Malaysia made a fortune in a muffled voice
Malaysia has invaded six islands and reefs on the mainland, and has made the fastest moves and the largest profits from oil exploration in the South China Sea. As early as the 60s of the last century, Malaysia cooperated with foreign oil companies to carry out oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Nansha. Today, hundreds of oil wells have been drilled, accounting for more than half of the total number of oil and gas wells in the countries surrounding the South China Sea.
At present, Malaysia extracts more than 30 million tons of oil per year in the South China Sea, accounting for nearly one-third of Malaysia's annual oil production. Malaysia extracts a lot of oil and exports oil to the mainland. According to the data, Malaysia exported 54.8 million tons of oil to China in 2023, becoming the mainland's fourth-largest source of crude oil imports.
In 2022, Petronas' revenue in 2022 was US$84 billion, which was also indispensable from the contribution of oil from the Nansha Sea.
2. Indonesia mines 9 million tons per year
Although Indonesia has no territorial disputes with the mainland in the South China Sea, it has overlapping maritime claims. The overlap is mainly in the Natuna Islands, which extract 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, equivalent to 9 million tons of oil, or one-fifth of Indonesia's total oil and gas production.
3. Vietnam has the greatest ambition and appetite
Vietnam is currently the country that occupies the largest number of mainland islands and reefs in the South China Sea, and has been frantically stealing oil resources in the South China Sea since the 70s of the last century. In the past few decades, China has signed cooperation agreements with oil companies from Western countries to develop more than a dozen oil fields such as Baihu Oilfield, Qinglong Oilfield, Dongfang Oilfield and Daxiong Oilfield, some of which are within the nine-dash line of the mainland.
At its peak in 2000-2016, Vietnam extracted more than 15 million tons of oil per year in the South China Sea. In recent years, Vietnam's oil extraction has declined sharply due to depletion, but it has remained above 9 million tons.
4. The small country of Brunei is also crazy
The small country of Brunei, which is less than 6,000 square kilometers, occupies Nantong Reef, the southernmost tip of the mainland's Spratly Islands. The reef is very close to the Brunei-Sabah Basin, which is a well-known oil and gas rich area in the South China Sea, with more than 3 billion tons of oil reserves.
Brunei has developed more than a dozen oil and gas fields here, half of which are within China's nine-dash line, with an annual output of more than 4 million tons of oil and more than 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
5. The Philippines was the first country to invade the Spratly Islands
Since the end of the 40s of the last century, the Philippines has begun to investigate and occupy the islands in the Nansha Sea, and it is also the first country to exploit oil and gas resources in the South China Sea. In 1974, the Philippines leased the Nansha Lile Bank to the Swedish Oil Company for exploration and development, and a total of 37 wells were drilled, seven of which were located within China's nine-dash line.
However, due to technical, safety and other reasons, the Philippines is a project that gets up early in the morning and catches up late, and finally forms a production capacity of not many projects, with an annual oil exploitation capacity of only one million tons, and a large amount of oil for domestic consumption still has to be imported from abroad.
According to statistics, nearly 1,400 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the South China Sea, most of which are in the Nansha area. There are 28 oil fields, 225 gas wells, and nearly 500 oil wells within the mainland's nine-dash line, and the annual oil output is more than 50 million tons, equivalent to 9% of the mainland's oil imports last year.
Compared with these five countries, the mainland's oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea started relatively late, limited to the shallow sea areas of the Beibu Gulf and the Pearl River estuary near the mainland, and the early oil production was not large. In recent years, mining efforts have increased, and production capacity has been increased.
According to public data, in 2022, the eastern South China Sea oilfield will produce 14.6 million tons, the western South China Sea oilfield will produce 5.15 million tons of crude oil, and the total output of the two major oilfields will be about 19.75 million tons. Among them, the eastern South China Sea oilfield is the seventh largest oilfield in the country and the second largest offshore oilfield, with more than 50 oilfields in production and nearly 50 offshore production facilities, and the production of crude oil has increased by nearly 6 million tons in the past five years.
However, in the waters of the Nansha Islands, where oil resources are most concentrated, the mainland is still blank, and there is not a single oil well or the output of a single ton of crude oil. It is said that the mainland has long mastered the technology of 10,000 meters of deep-sea oil extraction, and the cost of exploitation has long been reduced. Why hasn't there been a large-scale exploitation of oil in the Spratly waters?
The key reason for this is that offshore oil rigs produce oil, and the electrical equipment on the platform needs sufficient power. If it is close to land, submarine cables can be laid. However, if it is far from land, a large diesel generator set can be used.
The Spratly Islands are more than 1,000 kilometers away from China's land, and laying submarine cables is not practical. The use of large diesel generator sets to supply electricity consumes a lot of fuel and is too costly. At present, the most feasible method is to use offshore wind turbines to generate electricity.
In May 2023, the first deep-sea floating wind turbine in the South China Sea has been successfully connected to the grid for power generation, and one motor can generate 22 million kilowatts of electricity per year. With the blessing of such a national weapon, the day of large-scale oil exploitation in the Nansha sea area must not be too far away!