A Chinese development firm is buying oil fields in western Texas for more than $1 billion.
Yantai
Xinchao Industry Co. said in a Saturday regulatory filing that it
planned to buy assets from Tall City Exploration and Plymouth Petroleum,
The Wall Street Journal reported.
The
filing didn’t give much information about the fields, except that they
are in Howard and Borden counties and part of the Permian Basin, long
one of the most productive oil regions in the country.
The deal shows
how strong interest has become among Chinese firms in the United
States’s energy sector. Companies in China had shown recent interest in
American oil fields, and this deal seems to be the first to move
forward, the Journal said.
The plunge in worldwide oil prices over
the last year and a half has also made such deals especially attractive
to cash-rich Chinese companies betting that prices will rise.
Chinese
investment in sensitive oil areas is restricted, but Yantai Xinchao
said it has already received government permission for the acquisition,
according to the Journal.
(thehill.com, 27 Oct., 2015)