Total Says CNPC Approves Tight Gas Plan in China

Total SA, Europe s third-biggest oil company, said partner China National Petroleum Corp. approved a plan to produce so-called tight natural gas from the south Sulige field in Inner Mongolia. The project has been forwarded to China s National Development and Reform Commission for approval, Florent Segura, a company spokesman, said by telephone on March 24.

The French company has a 49 percent stake in the project and CNPC s PetroChina Co. is the operator with 51 percent control, according to Total. The initial investment in the project will be about $2 billion, French dailies Les Echos and La Tribune have reported. The French oil and gas producer includes Sulige among a dozen major projects slated to begin this year and next and has forecast an estimated start of the Chinese field in 2013, according to a February earnings presentation.

The field has proved and probable reserves of 440 million barrels of oil equivalent and forecast production capacity of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

Total has reached agreements in recent years to develop oil and gas fields with Chinese companies outside China. It won a stake in the contract for Iraq s Halfaya oil field with CNPC and has teamed up with China National Offshore Oil Corp. as partners with Tullow Oil Plc to tap fields in the Lake Albert basin in Uganda.