China’s offshore oil and gas major CNOOC Ltd is expected to start production at Lingshui 17-2, a large deepwater natural gas deposit in South China Sea, in the first half of 2021, the company executive said on Thursday.

Lingshui 17-2 is CNOOC’s first fully-owned deepwater gas project, with annual production of 3 billion cubic meters, or about 1.6% of China’s total domestic gas production.

“Deepwater exploration remains the key area to us in the future, and we have discovered medium-sized oil and gas deposits in Lingshui and Wenchang areas,” said Xu Keqiang, chief executive of CNOOC, at a media briefing.

CNOOC had vowed to hike the share of natural gas to make up 35% of its total output by 2025, from about 21% currently, and to 50% by 2035, as a contribution to Beijing’s climate change pledge.

CNOOC is also planning to raise investment in offshore wind development, to more than 5% of annual capital spending from previous 3-5%, in order to seize more offshore wind resources, said Xu.

(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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