PetroChina Poised for $6bn Listing

China’s oil giant, PetroChina is planning to raise $6 billion in a listing of new shares in Shanghai, to finance oil exploration and overseas acquisitions.

The company has also recently announced a couple of significant discoveries. Last month PetroChina, which invested $19 billion in 2006, announced a big discovery in Bohai Bay, an oilfield with more than seven billion barrels of reserves. This was followed by reports that the company had made a significant natural gas discovery in Sichuan Province.

Also recently PetroChina has made efforts to secure a position in Canadian oil sands and it has a preliminary agreement to buy half of the crude shipped through a $4 billion pipeline to be built from Alberta, across the Rockies to Canada’s Pacific coast.

News of the cash-call and Shanghai listing sent PetroChina stock soaring to record levels, valuing the group at $273 billion, ahead of Royal Dutch Shell.