The Ministry of Land and Resources has established a goal of discovering 10 medium-sized oil fields and eight to 10 major natural gas fields on the mainland by 2010, as it steps up efforts to enhance national energy security.
The oil fields should each have at least 100 million tonnes of reserves, while the gas fields will each have at least 0.1 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of reserves, according to the first national geological exploration blueprint issued by the ministry on Wednesday.
The ministry did not specify whether the reserves refer to economically recoverable ones, or the broader geological reserves, which may include those too difficult or too costly to extract.
'It's not possible to make comparisons on these targets as it did not give definitions for the reserves,' said DBS Vickers analyst Gideon Lo Wai-yip.
In its five-year plan, which spans 2006 to 2010, the ministry said it wanted to add 4.5 billion to 5 billion tonnes of proven geological oil reserves and 2.5 tcm to 2.8 tcm of gas reserves. This is up from 4.42 billion tonnes and 2.6 tcm achieved between 2001 and 2005.
Some progress already has been made.
