OREANDA-NEWS. On the occasion of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to France, Gérard Mestrallet, Chairman and CEO of ENGIE, signed a MOU with Ding Xuedong, Chairman and CEO of China Investment Corporation (CIC) in Paris. Premier Li and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls were present at the signing ceremony.

Through their new agreement, ENGIE and CIC reinforce their cooperation in the following areas:

  • Co-investment in large energy projects, particularly renewable energy projects in fast developing countries,
  • Cooperation in new technologies and in energy efficiency fields, especially in China.

The cooperation between ENGIE and CIC started in 2011. It was notably marked by the establishment of a fruitful shareholder relationship in ENGIE’s exploration and production activities in which CIC holds a 30% ownership interest.

Today’s MOU is the consolidation of the two parties’ cooperation in the past years, and it keeps pace with their new strategies. The MOU also illustrates their common vision on the transition to a low carbon economy at a global scale.

ENGIE in China

ENGIE has been present in China for over 40 years. In 2008, ENGIE opened its first representative office in China and started to develop relationship and cooperation with Chinese partners in the energy field such as: natural gas, LNG, gas infrastructure, energy services and engineering services, for projects in China as well as in overseas markets.

In power generation, ENGIE supports joint carbon emissions reduction projects (Clean Development Mechanisms–CDM), while its engineering teams assist in the development of the Taishan EPR and support the development of hydroelectric projects in other countries with Chinese partners.

In natural gas, ENGIE signed a worldwide partnership in 2011 with the Chinese sovereign fund CIC granting the latter a 30% share in ENGIE exploration and production activities. The Group sold 2.3 million metric tons of LNG to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), with deliveries beginning in 2013, and installed the first floating regasification terminal in China. In 2012, ENGIE also began a cooperation agreement with PetroChina to explore the upstream gas potential in Qatar, then extended the agreement to gas storage in China in 2013 (development support for six sites). The Group currently assists Shanghai Gas Group, a unit of Shenergy Group, for the expansion of one of its LNG terminals.

In energy services, ENGIE signed in 2014 two major cooperation agreements to develop energy projects in the large Chinese cities: the first one with Beijing Enterprises Group in Beijing and the second one with Shenergy in Shanghai. In January 2015, ENGIE and Sichuan Energy Investment Distributed Energy Systems created a Joint Venture for the joint development and the operation of Guangan Huixiang Innovation Park Distributed Energy Project, the first Distributed Energy Project in an industry park in Southwest China.