Investment Updates News
- 9 countries added to investment list
Date: 2-Mar-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
THE government has added nine oil and gas producers in North Africa, South America and the Middle East to a list of countries that it wants major domestic companies to invest in.
Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Morocco, Libya, Niger, Norway, Ecuador and Bolivia are now on the list, which builds on previous ones issued in 2004 and 2005, the National Development and Reform Commission said Thursday.
It underlines China's desire to secure greater access to oil and natural gas supplies to help offset the country's growing thirst for energy imports.
Domestic companies that invest in the oil and gas sectors in these countries will receive benefits including tax breaks.
Major oil companies in China are already present in many of the newly added countries either in terms of exploration or production.
On Tuesday, Canada's TG World Energy Corp. said oil had flowed in Niger from the Saha-1 well drilled by its partner CNPC International Tenere, a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), but the well wasn't capable of commercial production.
In Ecuador, the Andes Petroleum consortium that includes CNPC and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. bought the oil and pipeline assets of Canada's EnCana Corp. for US$1.42 billion in 2005. Sinochem, China's fourth-largest oil company by assets, is also active in the South American country.
In Oman, CNPC has developed an oil block producing 12,000 barrels a day since 2002. This volume is mixed in with the country's export streams, making up some of the crude oil exported to China, according to a report prepared for the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission last year.
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