Hess Corp., the fifth-biggest U.S. oil company, will explore for crude in China in cooperation with that nation’s largest oil company, PetroChina Co.
Hess and PetroChina will work with dense rock in the Daqing oil field, a formation that’s similar to the Bakken basin in North Dakota, where Hess is already exploring, Jay Wilson, a Hess spokesman, said by telephone today.
Hess, based in New York, opened an office in Beijing earlier this year and is looking for additional exploration and production opportunities in cooperation with Beijing-based PetroChina and other companies Wilson didn’t name.
"It’s a very fast-growing market for energy,” Wilson said. “We’re looking to leverage our Bakken experience and capability to grow our unconventional resource base globally.”
The China field may require horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which Hess uses in the U.S., Wilson said. Fracturing injects water, sand and chemicals into rock to help release the flow of oil and gas.
Hess produces more than 16,000 barrels of oil a day in the Bakken formation. The company has similar exploration operations in tight rocks in a basin near Paris and plans to start drilling in France in the first quarter of next year, Wilson said.
Hess rose $1.76, or 3.1 percent, to $57.81 as of 4:15 p.m. in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange. PetroChina rose 1.3 percent to HK$8.82 in Hong Kong trading.
