Energy Business Review: PetroChina Expands as ConocoPhillips Comes Up Short

The largest publicly-traded oil producer in the world, PetroChina (NYSE:PTR), reported that it expects to expand its output by purchasing assets ‘on a large scale.’ PTR will pour a minimum of $60 billion into global oil and natural gas assets by 2020, a major investment which is expected to increase its overseas output to around 50 percent of its total.

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A week ago, ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) closed its Philadelphia area refinery that it considered insufficiently profitable, and now the company reports that it has at least five bidders for the installation, which is capable of processing some 185,000 barrels a day. Renewed interest in the refinery has persuaded Conoco to extend its sales deadline until the end of May.

A proposed $40 billion project to export gas from Alaska to Asia gets a nod to move forward, as Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), BP (NYSE:BP), and ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) resolve their controversy with Alaska’s government over a North Slope oil & gas lease. In the process, approval for a massive new pipeline and LNG export terminal is granted as well.

In only the second such approval by regulators in over 30 years, Scana’s (NYSE:SCG) proposal to build two new nuclear reactors in South Carolina is affirmed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company will provide 55 percent of the estimated $10.2 billion cost of construction of the reactors, which might be the last built domestically in the current decade.

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To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lawson at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com