OREANDA-NEWS. May 28, 2014. China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) said it plans to sell all its assets in the eastern part of two major transmission pipelines.

The country's largest oil and gas producer plans to first register an independent company in Shanghai to manage the assets and debts of the eastern sections of lines 1 and 2 of the West-East Gas Pipeline, and then sell all the shares in the company to outside investors. CNPC did not say who was eligible to invest.

The sale would help the company optimize asset allocation and financing structure, and boost "mixed-share ownership" in the energy sector, CNPC said.

The central government has decided to reform state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through so-called mixed-share ownership, which would include outside investors. State-owned oil majors started experiments in this regard this year.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) has announced plans to restructure its sales assets, estimated to be worth over 300 billion yuan. No less than 30 percent of a new company will be offered to outside investors, Sinopec said.

CNPC has also promised to invite investors to develop blocks with estimated reserves of 600 million tons of oil. It plans to allow investors to own up to 49 percent of the projects.

Now CNPC is taking another step forward in the government's reform plans.

An employee of an investment bank said it was not surprising it would sell some pipeline assets, but unloading the entirety of the eastern section of the pipeline system was a jolt.

Line 1 of the West-East Gas Pipeline opened in December 2004 to carry natural gas from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to eastern areas of the country. Work on line 2 finished at the end of 2012. That line transmits natural gas imported from Central Asia.

CNPC set up a joint venture last year to manage the assets in the western section of the two lines, and then sold half of the new company to raise 60 billion yuan from insurance companies, pension funds, banks and public funds, the investment bank source said.

The assets in the eastern section include trunk pipelines and some branches. A third-party assessment agency hired by CNPC put the value of these assets at 91.627 billion yuan, and determined the net value was 38.955 billion yuan.

An investor with knowledge of the West-East Gas Pipeline said line 1 has an annual return on assets of 18 percent, and the figure for line 2 was 10 percent.

The return would be influenced by government decisions on transmission fees not on gas prices, the investor said. In 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, set the return rate at 12 percent before taxation.