Jakarta. Chinese oil company PetroChina has launched the drilling campaign involving 14 oil and gas wells at Jabung block in the Indonesian province of Jambi after winning a 20-year extension of the exploration contract, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The company last year planned to drill 11 wells at Jabung and recently added three more wells to the campaign, said Dencio Renato Boele, a spokesman for the company’s local unit PetroChina International Jabung Ltd.

The government recently awarded a contract extension until 2043 to the company.

“From February, PetroChina officially continued operations at Jabung for the 2023-43 period. We are determined to execute this mandate in the best possible way for the next 20 years,” Dencio told a news conference in Jakarta.

Earlier this week, the company’s CEO Qian Mingyang claimed that the drilling campaign using the latest technology at nine wells produced 4,091 barrels of oil per day and 28.6 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

“The promising initial production proves that the Jabung block still has the potential for future development. PetroChina will continue prospecting other potential wells at Jabung in the coming years,” Qian said.

Drilling preparations are at the final phase for the five remaining wells which are expected to produce an additional 2,717 bpd of oil and 7.4 mscfd of gas.

Jabung is currently one of Indonesia’s most productive oil and gas blocks. Explorations in the area began in 1993 and within two years the first oil deposit was found. The block began to deliver crude oil in 1997.

PetroChina took over the Jabung operations from Devon Energy in 2002 and operates under the supervision of the Indonesian government’s upstream oil and gas authority (SKK Migas).

The Chinese company is partnering with state-run oil company Pertamina and Malaysia’s Petronas in managing the block.

Since 2006, PetroChina has managed to retain daily output of more than 50,000 bpd.