China's overseas oil and gas investment : motivations, strategies, and global impact

Abstract

In the mid and late 1990s, China embarked on a path of investing in overseas upstream oil and gas assets and intensified its efforts in the latter part of the decade. Since the beginning of this decade, Chinese state oil companies have made a bigger push to expand overseas, an effort strongly favored and encouraged by the Chinese government. The Chinese state oil companies have thus been taking advantage of the central government’s growing concern over potential disruptions to their energy supplies to realize their desires of having larger business operations around the world. “Going out” has become part of the overall investment strategy for every state oil company in China. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) leads the charge in overseas upstream petroleum investment. CNPC was later joined by its publicly-listed subsidiary PetroChina. China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), through its publicly listed subsidiary CNOOC Limited, has followed CNPC’s lead in the pursuit of overseas ventures. China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), together with its own publicly listed subsidiary Sinopec Corp, comes in third in its overseas energy investment activities. In addition to these three, state oil trading company Sinochem Corporation and two non-oil state companies, China International Trust & Investment Company (CITIC) and ZhenHua Oil Company, have also begun investing in oil and gas overseas.