China National Offshore Oil Company Limited (CNOOC Ltd.) announced on Wednesday that it had begun trial production at a new oil field cluster in the South China Sea.

     The field's current daily output had reached 14,000 barrels with seven wells under trial production.

     Located in the Pearl River mouth basin in the western South China Sea off the coast of Guangdong Province, CNOOC's Wenchang oil field cluster is consists of four separate oil fields, namely 19-1, 15-1, 14-3 and 8-3.

     WenChang 19-1 is the first to start production, and its peak daily production is expected to reach more than 18,800 barrels. The other three fields will come on stream this year.

     Five wellhead platforms, one floating production storage and offloading units (FPSO) and altogether 26 producing wells are expected to be built at the Wenchang cluster, according to the company.

     "Joint development of these four oil fields, which are geologically close to each other, was adopted to reduce costs as well as exploit the reserves more efficiently," said Liu Jian, Executive Vice President of CNOOC Ltd., which holds 100 percent interest of the fields and acts as the operator. 

    The Hong Kong- and New York-listed company is China's largest offshore oil producer. It produced 171 million barrels-of-oil-equivalent (BOE) last year, up 2.6 percent from a year ago.