CNOOC, CPC Plan Deep Water Exploration in Taiwan Strait

State-controlled energy firms in China and Taiwan are preparing to jointly explore for natural gas in deep waters in the Taiwan Strait, having failed to make significant shallow-water finds despite nearly a decade of prospecting together, Dow Jones Newswire has reported.

China’s CNOOC, and Taiwan state-run refiner CPC Corp. are now drawing up a pact to jointly explore the northern end of the 180-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait, and may invite a foreign partner to join them, an CPC official told the Wall Street Journal.

The newswire said that the new CNOOC-CPC project follows the failure a 2002 CNOOC-CPC joint venture to find gas under shallow waters in the southern end of the Taiwan Strait and the Chaozhou Shantou Basin off the coast of China's Guangdong province. That deal is due to be terminated later this year.

Under the new deal, the CPC official said, CNOOC and CPC will explore off the coast of Keelung and Hsinchu counties of Taiwan. A formal agreement is expected by late 2013.