Reporter heard from Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Group on March 1st, that the group signed the franchise contract on natural gas exploration with the Ministry of Energy of Thailand, to explore in parts of Khorat Basin, northeastern Thailand. This marks a major breakthrough in the company's international cooperation efforts to explore for oil and gas overseas.
It is learnt that, the Thailand s Ministry of Commerce respectively signed franchise exploitation contract with four enterprises from China, Canada, Australia and Singapore. The block in the awarded contract for Yanchang Petroleum is Khon Kaen, in northeastern Thailand s Khorat Basin and 280 kilometers away from the capital Bangkok. Two gas fields are already in production in Khorat Basin. Since the end of 2007, through the jointed efforts with the related parties of Thailand, Yanchang Petroleum has won from the hands of many international bidders the franchise to explore in the block.
Yanchang Petroleum Group is China s fourth largest local state-owned petroleum enterprise integrating exploring, exploiting and refining, only after China National Petroleum Corp., China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., and CNOOC. Its crude and refined oil output in 2009 was over 11 million tons.
