Private enterprises gain entries to bidding for China s shale gas mining

Some smaller petroleum companies including private enterprises will be invited to join the bidding for China's mining right on shale gas block which is expected to start after the Chinese New Year. The participation of private companies will break up the monopoly of state-owned enterprise in this market.

China will start the biddings for eight shale gas blocks located in Guizhou, Chongqing, Anhui and Zhejiang in the first quarter of this year, and each block covers an area of 6,000-7,000 square kilometers, according to Zhang Dawei, deputy director of the Oil and Gas Resources Strategy Research Centre under the Ministry of Land and Resource (MOLR).

Earlier in last November, MOLR had planned to initiate the bidding for mining right on six shale gas blocks only to the country's four state-owned oil companies, namely, CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC and Yangchang Petroleum. But the bidding hasn't been conducted so far.

When addressing a natural gas summit on January 20, Zhang revealed that more companies, such as Sinochem Group, Xinjiang Guanghui Group and Zhenhua Oil Co., Ltd, that have experiences in overseas petroleum and gas exploration are added in the bidder list, which previously had only included the country's four big state-owned oil giants.