Hong Kong/Alberta: A subsidiary of China's Sinopec Group agreed to pay $4.65 billion (Dh17 billion) for ConocoPhillips' stake in a Canadian oil sands project, marking the country's second largest investment in North America.
China, Asia's largest refiner, has been scouring the globe and spending billions of dollars on energy resources to support booming growth in the world's third-largest economy.
China's power and energy companies spent around $20 billion alone last year on outbound acquisitions, an amount that includes Sinopec's $7.2-billion purchase of Addax Petroleum, a company with oil assets in West Africa and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The latest Sinopec deal, China's fifth-largest acquisition in history, underlines a resurgence in interest in the vast but difficult-to-extract oil sands resource located in the province of Alberta. Investment in the oil sands has jumped since crude prices shot past $80 a barrel with the global economic recovery gaining traction.
US-based oil major ConocoPhillips said it would sell its 9.03 per cent interest in the Syncrude Canada project to China's top refiner. The deal, China's largest-ever purchase of a Canada-based asset, is set to close in the third quarter.
