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Planet-Profit Report, reporting on sustainable development in the Western United States.

China pours billions into U.S. shale

Global appetite for U.S. energy investments remains strong

By Matt Daily and Anna Driver, Reuters

China's Sinopec and France's Total SA have made major purchases into the U.S. energy sector, pouring $4.5 billion into deals to buy into booming production from shale rock formations.

The ventures showed that the global appetite for U.S. energy assets remained strong, with foreign oil and gas producers eager to invest in several of the mostly undeveloped fields that are believed to hold billions of cubic feet of natural gas and liquids.

Sinopec's Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration & Production Corp made its first foray into U.S. shale with a $2.2 billion investment to create a joint venture with Devon Energy Corp.

That gives Sinopec a one-third interest in five fields, while Total's $2.3 billion deal with Chesapeake Energy is its second joint shale venture with the U.S. company.

U.S. oil and gas producers have been in a frenzied land-grab in recent years to buy up rights that allow them to tap into the lucrative fields under development in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states.

That has left many looking for deep-pocketed partners to form joint ventures to help pay for the expensive hydraulic fracturing technology that allows them to crack the brittle shale rocks and extract the natural gas and other products.

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