China said it aims to open up oil and gas exploration to private and foreign firms, offering further details of a policy that would help assuage concerns over access to the industry ahead of next week’s signing of an interim trade deal with the US.
Companies with net assets of at least 300 million yuan (US$43.15 million) can apply for licenses as part of “a major reform,” the Chinese National Energy Commission (NEC) said at a briefing yesterday.
Previously, only state-owned firms were eligible for permits, an approach that retarded efforts to expand domestic production and cut its enormous import bill.
China has in the past two years adopted a substantial number of measures to help ease commercial frictions with the US, including opening up its financial sector to foreign ownership and taking steps to ban forced technology transfers.
Oil and gas was one of the sectors removed from the list of industries that restrict overseas investment in July last year.
The latest details from the NEC helped lift the stocks of a swathe of firms that service exploration and production in China.
While the nation’s three major state oil firms have raised spending to boost output, China’s crude imports have continued to break records.
Its gas imports have also grown apace, as the nation seeks to swap out dirty coal for the cleaner burning fuel across residences and industry.
“The sluggish growth of oil and gas production in China was partly due to the monopolistic nature of the upstream segment,” said Dennis Ip (葉捷賢), a power sector analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong. “The government’s intention is to introduce competition and encourage technological innovation in the E&P [energy and power] segment, and we believe this can help to lower the production costs of upstream players over the long run.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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