Chevron Corp. (CVX) is close to an initial deal with China National Petroleum Corp. to import natural gas from Australia , in the energy industry's latest bet that growing demand from China will justify multibillion-dollar projects aimed at tapping and transporting new gas supplies.

Chevron said it is near a preliminary agreement with CNPC to buy liquefied natural gas that the San Ramon , Calif. , company plans to produce from a facility in Western Australia . CNPC also would take a stake in one of the natural gas fields supplying Chevron's proposed LNG plant, called Wheatstone.

In addition, Chevron would partner in onshore oil and gas exploration with CNPC in China, giving the company greater access to the world's largest energy market even as it potentially gives its Chinese partner access to greater skills and know-how on enhanced oil-recovery technology.

(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall Street Journal website, WSJ.com).

Chevron, which said it expected to sign the preliminary agreement late Wednesday, didn't disclose further details. CNPC, China 's biggest oil and gas producer by volume, declined to comment further.

In an interview Monday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, John Watson, chairman and chief executive of Chevron, said that commercial terms remain to be determined but added that gas being sold from Chevron's other Australian LNG plants is being sold at "oil-linked pricing--not exactly oil parity. We've been very satisfied with that pricing. I've got no reason to believe we won't continue to get good pricing."

Comparable deals tend to be valued at significant levels in part because of the major upfront costs associated with plants that produce LNG, which is natural gas cooled into a liquid so it can be shipped overseas via tanker. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) last year signed a 20-year agreement to supply CNPC's listed subsidiary PetroChina Co. Ltd. (0857.HK, 601857.SH, PTR) from Gorgon, another Australian natural gas exporting facility that also involves Chevron, in a deal Australian officials have estimated to be valued at $47 billion at current exchange rates over the life of the agreement.

If approved by Australian regulators, Wheatstone would become Chevron's second major LNG project after Gorgon. Getting CNPC onboard is important because it would be the cornerstone buyer underpinning Chevron's plans to more than double the capacity of Wheatstone to 25 million metric tons.

The gas intended for China would go to market by 2016. Chevron says it has already committed 60% of the gas from the first phase of the project to other Asian buyers including Japan and South Korea , which have also taken small stakes in the gas fields themselves.

The project marks the continued reorientation of Chevron away from the lower-growth economies of Europe and North America to Asia , where developing economies like China and India are pushing up demand for oil and especially natural gas, which is seen as a cleaner alternative to coal.

"We are becoming the gas company of Asia ," said Mr. Watson.

As China seeks ways to reduce oil dependence, it will increase natural gas use from nine billion cubic feet a day in 2009 to 43 billion cubic feet a day by 2030, Edinburgh-based energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie predicts. China is building massive infrastructure to funnel in gas, including pipelines from Central and Southeast Asia and multibillion dollar terminals to receive LNG ships along the eastern coast.

Banking on that growth, companies like Chevron are investing in the complex infrastructure needed to ship natural gas and are rushing to lock in long-term contracts. After 2020, analysts predict, China 's exports could slow as it develops domestic supplies of unconventional gas locked in hard-to-develop shale and coal-bed methane fields.

Unconventional gas produced in the U.S. is already having a ripple effect across the world. With U.S. importing less, Middle Eastern gas is eyeing Asia and competing with supplies from Indonesia and Australia . "Right now, it's a buyers market," said John Vautrain, an energy analyst at Purvin & Gertz based in Singapore . "Longer term, oil is still expensive and coal is still dirty and the prospect for gas expansion is there."

China wants to copy that success in natural gas, and also wants to start exploring in deeper waters off its shore as part of its plans to diversify energy sources. But China doesn't have the know-how yet to tap unconventional gas or drill very deep offshore oil wells. That's opened up an opportunity for international oil companies including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN, RDSB, RDSB.LN), BP PLC (BP, BP.LN), and Exxon Mobil who have that expertise.

Mr. Watson said Chevron is talking to Sinopec about cooperating on shale gas in China .

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