China's largest oil producer, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), announced Wednesday that it had bought 66.2252 million listed shares for US$500 million at US$7.55 per share in Russia's OAO Rosneft. The Russian oil giant will go public on the London and Moscow stock exchanges today. Having raised US$10.4 billion by last Friday the Initial Public Offering (IPO) is considered to be one of the biggest undertaken in the world.

The move signifies that China, an economic powerhouse thirsty for oil, is moving quickly to enter the Russian energy market and it will enable China to have better access to worldwide energy resources, analysts believe.

After receiving Rosneft's invitation to subscribe for its listed shares, CNPC kept a close track of the IPO process, said their spokesman. According to him, based on its long-term development strategy and comprehensive evaluation, CNPC officially submitted its subscription proposal to Rosneft on July 12.

CNPC's proposal gave full consideration to supporting Rosneft's successful listing and aimed to boost pragmatic cooperation between the two companies, said the spokesman. Based on the asset evaluation CNPC's subscription plan was responsive to the share price range, he said.

The actual Rosneft share price conformed to CNPC's proposal. Their subscription of Rosneft listed shares would further expand the cooperation and deepen their long-term relationship, added the spokesman.

However, the US$500 million investment was not what the market had expected as previous reports suggested CNPC sought to buy a stake of up to US$3 billion in Rosneft. Britain's BP and Malaysia's Petronas also invested in the Rosneft IPO.

According to the spokesman CNPC and Rosneft had developed a sound cooperative relationship for mutual benefits. The two companies had set up a fundamental principle of complementary cooperation for common development in a long-term agreement signed in July 2005.

During Russian President Putin's visit in China in March the two companies signed a protocol agreement for integrated cooperation including petroleum exploration and development in Russia and refining, processing and marketing in China.

As one of Russia's largest oil companies Rosneft has proven oil reserves of 18.942 billion barrels of oil including 14.9 billion barrels of oil reserves and 691.1 billion cubic meters in natural gas.

Its crude oil production reached 74.6 million tons in 2005 and natural gas 13.1 billion cubic meters. It's estimated that Rosneft will produce 115 million tons of crude oil in 2010 and 127 million tons in 2015.

(Xinhua News Agency July 19, 2006)