Bohai Kenli 10-2 Hundred-Million-Ton Oilfield Cluster (Phase I) Commences Production

On July 22, CNOOC announced that the Bohai Kenli 10-2 Oilfield Cluster Development Project (Phase I) officially commenced production, marking the start of the production stage for China’s largest shallow lithologic offshore oilfield. This is of great significance for safeguarding national energy security.

Located in the southern Bohai Sea, the oilfield sits in an average water depth of about 20 meters. With proven geological reserves exceeding 100 million tons, it is the first hundred-million-ton shallow lithologic oilfield in the sag belt of the Bohai Bay Basin. The project will be developed in two phases. Phase I, leveraging existing facilities, includes the construction of one central processing platform and two wellhead platforms, with 79 development wells planned for commissioning. Peak daily production is expected to reach about 3,000 tons of oil-equivalent. Its reservoir is China’s first offshore development of a “dendritic heavy-oil reservoir,” characterized by reserves that are “dispersed, narrow, thin, and complex.” The “dendritic + heavy-oil thermal recovery” combination is rare both domestically and internationally.

The R&D team overcame key technical challenges to establish a technology system for developing complex heavy-oil reservoirs, and innovatively adopted a combined development approach of “conventional water injection + cyclic steam stimulation + steam flooding.” The central processing platform is equipped with two production systems, making it the most process-complex platform in Bohai and the first large-scale heavy-oil thermal recovery platform in the southern Bohai Sea. In drilling and completion, innovative operational models increased the reservoir encounter rate by more than 30%, and breakthroughs in extended-reach well technology will help Bohai Oilfield advance toward its 2025 target of 40 million tons in total production.