State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) has signed a memorandum of understanding with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC, 中國石油天然氣集團) on cross-strait oil and gas exchange and cooperation, the Taipei-based company said in a press statement released yesterday.
CPC said company president Chu Shao-hua (朱少華) signed the pact with his Chinese counterpart, CNPC general manager Jiang Jiemin (蔣潔敏), on Tuesday in Beijing.
CNPC is China’s largest oil and gas producer and supplier. It is also the parent company of PetroChina Co (中石油) which is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shanghai bourses.
Based on the three-year pact, the two companies will expand current cooperation in the areas of upstream exploration and development, refinery and petrochemical engineering, energy savings and emission reductions, marketing and business management, overseas gas and oil businesses, as well as the trading in oil products.
CPC said the pact — which aims to continue an existing agreement that expired this year — was signed when a CPC delegation led by Chu visited CNPC headquarters in Beijing earlier this week after participating in a technology seminar in Qingdao, Shandong Province, last week.
During the trip, CPC also signed a letter of intent on lubricating oil technology and market development with Chinese state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC, 中國海洋石油總公司), the Taiwanese company said in the statement.
Lin Maw-wen (林茂文), CPC vice president and chairman of CPC’s wholly-owned unit Overseas Petroleum and Investment Corp (海外石油暨投資公司), and Zheng Baoguo (鄭保國), general manager of CNOOC Oil and Gas Development and Utilization Corp (中海油氣開發利用公司), signed the pact on Sunday on behalf of their parent companies, the statement said.
CPC’s latest agreement with CNOOC represents further cooperation between the Taiwanese refiner and China’s third-largest oil producer and the biggest offshore oil explorer.
The two companies have been collaborating on overseas oil exploration since the late 1990s as it has become increasingly important for CPC to seek more oil resources amid rising oil prices in recent years.
In August, the Taiwanese refiner announced it had signed a six-year contract with another Chinese state-run company, Sinopec Corp (中國石油化工集團), to conduct joint oil and gas exploration off the north coast of Australia.
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