PetroChina Co. (857), the country’s biggest energy producer, said it has agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA)’s Groundbirch shale-gas project in Canada to gain drilling expertise and technology. Shell will remain the operator of the project, Mao Zefeng, the Beijing-based senior assistant secretary to PetroChina’s board, said by telephone today. The deal was completed yesterday, Mao said, declining to give the value of the transaction. PetroChina plans to pay more than $1 billion for a stake in the Groundbirch property, Hong Kong-based FinanceAsia reported on its website, without saying where it got the information. Shell and PetroChina’s parent agreed in June 2011 to increase cooperation in energy exploration in China, estimated to hold the world’s largest reserves of shale gas. “Although PetroChina will gain just a minority stake, the firm can re-deploy any advanced technologies acquired overseas back home to better exploit China’s vast shale-gas reserves,” Gordon Kwan, head of energy research at Mirae Asset Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong, said by e-mail. The deal with Europe’s biggest oil company is an extension of the companies’ cooperation in China, Mao said. Shell and China National Petroleum Corp., PetroChina’s parent, completed the country’s first horizontal shale-gas well in March. “The shale-gas project will continue to supply Shell’s customers in North America,” Mao said. “In the long term, we will explore the possibility of exporting it to Asia in the form of liquefied natural gas.”
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