Beijing, March 28:

China has found a huge offshore oilfield that could become the energy-hungry country’s biggest new oil source in a decade, a state news agency said on Wednesday.

The scale of the discovery, if confirmed, would be welcome news to Beijing, which is struggling to step up domestic oil production to reduce reliance on rising imports to fuel its booming economy.

China is the world’s No. 2 oil consumer behind the United States and its oil imports rose 14.5 per cent last year. State-owned PetroChina Ltd, which found the field in Bohai Bay off China’s east coast, estimated its reserves at 2.2 billion barrels, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing unidentified company sources. “The newly found oilfield is the largest China has discovered over the past ten years,” the report said.

PetroChina, China’s biggest oil company, said last week it found a new oilfield in Bohai Bay but gave no details. PetroChina spokespeople on Wednesday refused to release any information.

If the reported size is accurate, “China will have added a valuable upstream asset that can rival the country’s leading oil production centers in the future,” Steven Knell, an energy analyst for consulting firm Global Insight, wrote in a report to clients.

Despite its size, it was unclear how the field would affect China’s need for imports.

Daily production could reach 200,000 barrels within three years, Xinhua said. But that still would be equal to just a fraction of China’s imports of 2.9 million barrels per day.

China met its oil needs from domestic fields until the late 1990s, when it became a net importer. Demand is rising by about 7 per cent a year, but domestic production in 2006 rose by just 1.7 per cent. Imports last year accounted for 47 per cent of consumption.

Economists say Chinese oil demand, driven by blistering economic growth that reached 10.7 per cent in 2006, has strained world supplies and pushed up prices. The biggest recent domestic oil discovery, also made by PetroChina, was a field found in the mid-1990s in the Tarim Basin in the country’s desert northwest.

Chinese companies have been spending on exploration in the northwest and coastal areas, but results have been disappointing.