China's Big Play for Middle East Oil - Bloomberg

China's Big Play for Middle East Oil - Bloomberg:

"China's Middle East energy footprint has been expanding. In February, it made a deal for a stake in Abu Dhabi’s onshore oil. In March, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz travelled to China to strengthen trade ties, and now a Chinese consortium is lining up for a stake in the Aramco IPO. Geopolitical trends favor deeper engagement, but Chinese companies need to show they can deliver. The Chinese need new upstream opportunities. Domestic production from the country's highly mature fields has slumped: down 6.9 percent last year and 8 percent year-on-year so far in 2017. But, encouraged by the government to guarantee energy security, companies' capital budgets are set to soar again this year. Sinopec will spend as much as BP, and even at the low end of estimates, PetroChina, the listed unit of China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, will be the highest-spending listed oil company in the world."



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