China’s government has lifted restrictions on the formation of joint ventures in a bid to promote domestic oil and gas development. Officials in Beijing hope the policy shift will attract foreign investors to new projects.
Joint ventures will be able to help the country produce more oil and gas, according to Lin Boqiang, the director of Xiamen University’s China Center for Energy Economics Research (CCEER).
“China boasts advantages in technologies [for] exploring conventional oil and natural gas but lags behind some foreign counterparts in unconventional exploration,” Lin explained to Xinhua. “It is therefore necessary to promote international cooperation in the unconventional sphere.”