China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), the nation's biggest offshore oil producer, finalized a deal yesterday to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Indonesian Tangguh gas project for its LNG terminal in East China's Fujian Province.

The Tangguh project, under the operation of BP Plc, is set to supply 2.6 million tons of LNG annually for 25 years to the Fujian terminal starting from 2009. The value of the deal was not revealed.

The new deal will allow CNOOC to supply LNG to gas power stations and urban customers in five cites in Fujian Province, which will help meet the rising energy demand in the area.

"The deal is Indonesia's first long-term LNG supply project for China, which has far-reaching significance for both countries," said Eddy Purwanto, deputy head of finance, economy and marketing of BP MIGAS, an Indonesian government body supervising oil and gas production in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Tangguh project, located in Papua of Indonesia, is scheduled to come on stream by late 2008, drawing its gas supplies from six fields in the Bintuni area.

CNOOC is the first company to sign a supply and purchase agreement with the project, which will speed up construction of the third LNG project in Indonesia.

"The deal has received active support from both countries, and CNOOC is also looking at future opportunities to expand its oil and liquefied gas supply," said Wu Zhenfang, CNOOC's vice-president

State-owned CNOOC is now leading the race to build LNG terminals along the eastern coast of China as the government aims to diversify energy supplies and reduce its heavy reliance on coal and oil, instead of pushing the use of cleaner natural gas.

The government so far has approved the construction of two terminals, the one in Fujian and another in South China's Guangdong Province. CNOOC, which owns the two facilities, started up the country's first LNG terminal in Guangdong Province this June. The Beijing-based company has plans to build terminals in Shanghai, Ningbo and Zhuhai by around 2010.

China's top three oil companies, PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC, plan to build a string of LNG terminals in coastal areas such as Shanghai, Shandong and Jiangsu, despite the surging prices.

Earlier media reports this month said CNOOC would soon announce a deal to buy liquefied gas from Malaysian state oil company Petronas.

CNOOC is reportedly awaiting government approval for the deal, which will supply LNG to a planned terminal in Shanghai, the nation's economic powerhouse.

Industry officials were quoted as saying the price for the deal was about US$5 to US$6 per million British thermal unit (BTU), but below the current market prices of US$9 to US$11 per million BTU.

CNOOC, one of the nation's three biggest oil companies, has been seeking overseas assets to drive its growth and help sate the energy demands of China's economy, which has expanded about 10 per cent annually in recent years.

In the first half of this year it completed its biggest-ever acquisition, a US$2.3 billion buyout of a Nigerian oilfield.

In a mid-year report, CNOOC said its net profit jumped 37.6 per cent from a year earlier to 16.28 billion yuan (US$2.04 billion). The company also said it would churn out 9 per cent more oil and gas, or 168 to 170 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2006.

Editor: Yan