Agence France Presse

Beijing, February 11:

China is digging deeper in search of oil, boosting its reserves by at least 25 per cent as part of a strategy to locate new energy sources at home and abroad, state media said Friday. Intensified exploration efforts helped the two biggest oil companies to locate nearly 850 million tonnes of oil reserves in the course of 2004, the Xinhua news agency said. This suggests that China’s proven oil reserves topped four billion tonnes at the end of last year, given earlier reports stating the country had 3.2 billion tonnes by late 2003.

The nation’s largest oil producer, China National Petroleum Corp, or CNPC, reported finding 520 million tonnes of new oil reserves in 2004, while Sinopec found 328 million tonnes.