China's largest offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd plans to raise its oil and gas output by 15 to 16 percent to somewhere between 195 million and 199 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) in 2008.

That will compare to 169 million to 171 million BOE in 2007, Yang Hua, CNOOC's chief financial officer, told reporters in Hong Kong yesterday.

To fuel the growth, the company will earmark $5.24 billion as capital expenditure for 2008, increasing 43.7 percent compared with 2007. The capital expenditure for exploration and development activities is expected to increase to $1.04 billion and $4.15 billion respectively.

"CNOOC will embrace a period featuring high output growth," Chairman Fu Chengyu said.

The company expects to achieve a replacement ratio of over 100 percent in 2008, meaning it would discover enough reserves to replace all of its output.

"During the year, 10 new projects are expected to come on stream, including major offshore projects such as platform B, D, E of Penglai 19-3 phase II and Wenchang oilfields and Xijiang 23-1," the company said in a statement.

Yang is sure the company will maintain a high growth rate and will achieve a 7 to 11 percent compound annual growth rate from 2006 to 2010.

On the international oil price rise and a gloomy US economy, Yang said they would not considerably affect domestic crude prices since only 30 percent of the mainland's oil supply is imported.

Regarding the upcoming challenges, Yang said the company faces many difficulties such as increasing production cost, weakening greenback, rising taxes and deficiency of services.

He elaborated that the central government will implement many new taxes such as resources tax from this year, which would make the industrial environment tougher.

Mainland oilfields currently constitute over 80 percent of the company's total output. The remaining output comes from countries such as Indonesia.

Ricky Tam, chairman of Hong Kong Institute of Investors, said CNOOC would outperform the other two State-owned oil and petrochemical counterparts - PetroChina and Sinopec.