, Columnist
Why China’s Fracking Hopes Will Hit the Rocks
It’s all about geology.
A Sinopec shale project site.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Could China’s oil and gas industry be on the brink of a revolution?
That’s one interpretation of the government’s shakeup of regulations on petroleum production this month. The introduction of drill-it-or-lose-it rules and a possible extension of subsidies for unconventional gas output could end up dismembering sprawling industry leader PetroChina Co. and creating a new sector of independent upstream producers like those that have transformed the U.S. energy industry over the past decade, according to Laban Yu, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Jefferies LLC.