Saudi Arabia wants to expand its investments in China’s energy industry, the country’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said late on Friday, as part of the world’s leading oil exporter’s efforts to boost cooperation with a top customer.
“Saudi Arabia is very keen to elevate their partnership in the energy sector to the highest level,” he was quoted as saying in a statement late Friday, Reuters reported.
He said he hoped Saudi investments could increase to cover all Chinese provinces and that there was room to grow bilateral trade in both energy and other hydrocarbon products such as petrochemicals.
Falih also said he wanted to see new investment projects carried out by Saudi and Chinese sovereign wealth funds and added that the two countries shared interest in crude oil storage, mining, renewable energy and industrial development.
Both oil giants Saudi Aramco and petrochemicals conglomerate Saudi Basic Industries Corp (Sabic) have joint venture businesses in China and new projects under development.
In January, Aramco said it was also in advanced talks to invest in refineries in China. Sabic said in May it had agreed to build another petrochemical factory there.
