The 100-billion yuan is sufficient to keep the company's projects going this year, said Zhou Jiping, president of PetroChina.

Earlier media reports said that the company would need 150 billion yuan this year.

This year PetroChina plans to boost its oil exploration arm in the Erdos and Tarim basins in northern China and to make strategic adjustments to its refining and chemical projects in the coastal areas, Zhou told reporters on the sidelines of the company's annual shareholders' meeting yesterday.

The company also expects to see sizable and sustained growth in its overseas operations in the next eight to ten years, company Chairman Jiang Jiemin said yesterday.

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PetroChina's parent company China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and Venezuela have agreed to build two oil refineries in China, one of which has already kicked off infrastructure construction and is located in the southern Guangdong province, said Jiang.

"If all goes well, China could get 40 million tons of crude oil and heavy oil every year from Venezuela," he said.

PetroChina is also building a pipeline that transports 20 million tons of Kazakhstan oil to China annually. The project will be fully operational by the end of the third quarter.

According to Zhou, overseas mergers and acquisitions will be a key strategic development target for the company, and now is a "good time" to do so since oil prices have fallen 60 percent from last July's record high of $147 a barrel...

The full text is available in the April Issue of China Energy. Please visit　publications for more subscription details.