PetroChina

PetroChina Company Limited () is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. The company is currently Asia's largest oil and gas producer and was China's second biggest oil producer in 2006. Traded in Hong Kong and New York, the mainland enterprise announced its plans to issue stock in Shanghai in November 2007,Analysts express optimism about Chinese shares
(Xinhuanet.com, with source from ''Shanghai Daily'') and subsequently entered the constituent of SSE 50 Index. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, PetroChina was ranked as the 32nd-largest public company in the world.

History

PetroChina was established as a joint stock company with limited liabilities under the Company Law of the People's Republic of China (the PRC) on 5 November 1999, as part of the restructuring of CNPC. In the restructuring, CNPC injected into PetroChina most of the assets and liabilities of CNPC relating to its exploration and production, refining and marketing, chemicals and natural gas businesses.
Because of Sinopec's link to Sudan through parent company China Petrochemical Corporation, several institutional investors such as Harvard and Yale decided, in 2005, to divest from Sinopec. Sudan divestment efforts have continued to be concentrated on PetroChina since then. Fidelity Investments, after pressure from activist groups, also announced in a filing in the US that it had sold 91 per cent of its American Depositary Receipts in PetroChina in the first quarter of 2007.

At the beginning of May 2007, the company announced it had made China's largest oil find in a decade off the country's northeast coast, in an oilfield named Jidong Nanpu oil field in Bohai Bay. In May 2008 these expectations were lowered.

On 7 November 2007, Hang Seng Indexes Company announced that PetroChina would be a Hang Seng Index Constituent Stock, effective 10 December 2007. PetroChina also came under scrutiny from international organizations for its part in trading with the Sudanese government as it undertook the war in Darfur.

On 19 August 2009, PetroChina signed an A$50 billion deal with ExxonMobil to purchase liquefied natural gas from the Gorgon field in Western Australia, considered the largest contract ever signed between China and Australia, which ensures China a steady supply of LNG fuel for 20 years, and also forms as China's largest supply of relatively "clean energy". This deal has been formally secured, despite relations between Australia and China being at their lowest point in years, following the Rio Tinto espionage case and the granting of visas to Rebiya Kadeer to visit Australia.

PetroChina's Dushanzi District refinery became fully operational on 24 September 2009. The refinery is China's largest refinery with annual capacity of 10 million tons of oil and 1 million tons of ethylene. The refinery is an integral part of China's ambitions to import oil from Kazakhstan.

In February 2011, PetroChina agreed to pay $5.4 billion for a 49% stake in Canada's Duvernay shale assets owned by Encana. It was China's biggest investment in shale gas to date. PetroChina's subsidiary in Canada is named PetroChina Canada and has an office in Calgary. It operates under the direction of Li Zhiming.

China signed a deal in 2016 with the Nepal Oil Corporation to sell 30% of the total Nepalese petroleum consumption. China plans to build a pipeline to Nepal's Panchkhal along with a storage depot.

In 2017, the shares of PetroChina upped after the rise of natural gas prices for commercial use.

In February 2019, as part of the Arrow Energy joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell, the company was granted leases for $10 billion (AUS) towards the Surat project in Queensland, Australia. Liaoyang Petrochemical Corp, a unit of PetroChina, in May 2019 exported to Europe for the first time. PetroChina posted a US$4 billion profit for 2019.

PetroChina Pipelines

PetroChina Pipelines is a subsidiary (72.26%) of PetroChina that managed the first three pipelines of the project.

West–East Gas Pipeline I

History

The construction of the West–East Gas Pipeline started in 2002. The pipeline was put into trial operation on 1 October 2004, and the full commercial supply of natural gas commenced on 1 January 2005. The pipeline is owned and operated by PetroChina West–East Gas Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of PetroChina. Originally, it was agreed that PetroChina would have owned 50% of the pipeline, while Royal Dutch Shell, Gazprom, and ExxonMobil had been slated to hold 15% each, and Sinopec 5%. However, in August 2004, the Board of Directors of PetroChina announced that following good faith discussions with all parties to the Joint Venture Framework Agreement, the parties had not been able to reach an agreement, and the joint venture framework agreement was terminated.

Technical features

The long pipeline runs from Lunnan in Xinjiang to Shanghai. The pipeline passes through 66 cities in the 10 provinces in China.

Natural gas transported by the pipeline is used for electricity production in the Yangtze River Delta area.
The capacity of the pipeline is of natural gas annually.

The cost of the pipeline was US$5.7 billion. By the end of 2007, the capacity was planned to be upgraded to . For this purpose, ten new gas compressor stations will be built and eight existing stations are to be upgraded.

Connections

The West–East Gas Pipeline is connected to the Shaan-Jing pipeline by three branch pipelines.

The long Ji-Ning branch between the Qingshan Distributing Station and the Anping Distributing Station became operational on 30 December 2005.

Source of supply

The pipeline is supplied from the Tarim Basin oil and gas fields in Xinjiang province. The Changqing gas area in Shaanxi province is a secondary gas source. In the future, the planned Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline will be connected to the West–East Gas Pipeline.

Starting from 15 September 2009, the pipeline is also supplied with coalbed methane from the Qinshui Basin in Shanxi.

West–East Gas Pipeline II

Construction of the second West–East Gas Pipeline started on 22 February 2008. The pipeline with a total length of , including of the main line and eight sub-lines, will run from Khorgas in northwestern Xinjiang to Guangzhou in Guangdong. Up to Gansu, it will be parallel and interconnected with the first west–east pipeline. The western part of the pipeline is expected to be commissioned by 2009, and the eastern part by June 2011.

The capacity of the second pipeline is of natural gas per year. It is mainly supplied by the Central Asia-China gas pipeline. The pipeline is expected to cost US$20 billion.

The project is developed by China National Oil and Gas