Chinese oil and gas companies are working to gain a stronger foothold on the international market as economies improve, the head of an offshore company said.

Companies ranging from the China National Offshore Oil Corp. to the China Petroleum Chemical Corp. attended the annual Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week. Jin Xiaojian, the president of China Offshore Oil Engineering Co., a CNOOC division, told the official Xinhua News Agency the offshore market was improving and Chinese companies were looking to capitalize on the momentum.

"As an offshore oil and gas explorer, CNOOC is making great efforts to be a world-class enterprise. We can say that after the development over the past three decades, CNOOC is now actually an international level energy company," he was quoted as saying.

The British subsidiary of CNOOC entered into a partnership with FAR Ltd., an Australian company, in March that defines areas of mutual interest off the coast of Gambia and Senegal. Waters off the coast of West Africa are drawing capital interest and FAR Ltd. said acreage in the broader Mauritania-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau basin has listed at least eight recent oil discoveries.

The offshore oil sector accounts for about 30 percent of total crude oil production. A late April report from the International Energy Agency said offshore, despite CNOOC's sentiment, has been one of the hardest hit by a market downturn characterized by historically low crude oil prices.

Offshore performance last year was about 30 percent below a 10-year average for a period ending in 2015, the IEA said.

CNOOC said in March that it made 14 commercial discoveries and ended 2016 with 3.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent in net proved reserves. The company turned in one of its worst performances in five years with oil and gas revenues down 17 percent from 2015. In its annual statement, CNOOC reported capital spending cuts were sharper at 26.3 percent year-over-year.

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