CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油), the state-run oil company, said it discovered crude and natural gas in Chad.

The exploration well Benoy-1 could yield 9,800 barrels of oil and 35,000m3 of natural gas daily, the Taipei-based company said in a statement yesterday. It's the largest discovery at a single well for CPC, according to the statement.

CPC, which also has energy investments in Southeast Asia, the US, Australia and Latin America, signed an agreement with Chad in January 2006 for rights to explore for oil and gas in the landlocked African nation.

Taiwan imports almost all of its crude needs and is Asia's fourth-biggest buyer of natural gas in liquid form.

"Chad is only the beginning," CPC chairman Chu Shao-hua (朱少華) said at a briefing in Taipei.

The company aims to meet 10 percent of its oil needs from fields in which it has stakes, compared with 2 percent currently, Chu said, without elaborating.

The refiner owns 70 percent of the production rights in three areas in the African country, CPC spokeswomen Jessica Tang (唐苑莉) said by telephone in Taipei. The Chad government holds the rest, she said.

Chad's oil output reached 118,000 barrels a day in 2009, compared with the 2.06 million barrels a day produced by Nigeria, Africa's biggest producer, according to BP PLC's Statistical Review of World Energy.