Chinese offshore oil giant CNOOC Ltd. announced Thursday its subsidiary CNOOC Southeast Asia Ltd. has sold its working interests in an Indonesian oil production project for about 212 million U.S. dollars.

Under the deal, the company sold CNOOC ONWJ Ltd. to Indonesian-based EMP International Ltd., according to a company statement.

CNOOC ONWJ Ltd. holds a 36.7 percent working interest in the Offshore Northwest Java (ONWJ) production-sharing contract, a project with a daily crude output of 62,000 barrels of oil equivalent in the first nine months of 2011.

The sale was in line with the company's strategy of balancing and optimizing its asset allocation while taking resources, returns and risks into consideration, CNOOC Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Li Fanrong said in the statement.

CNOOC's share of net reserves in the ONWJ project had reached 22.26 million barrels of oil equivalent by the end of 2010.

As the listed subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corporation, China's largest offshore oil company, CNOOC Ltd. reported a 55 percent year-on-year drop in net profit in the first half of the year.

The profit decline was a result of lower crude oil prices in the first half, as the global financial crisis led to a world recession that curbed demand for fuel, despite a rise in oil and gas output, the company said.

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