Together with its massive push to have more and more residential and industrial customers switch from coal to gas, China is aiming to overhaul the ownership of its huge gas pipeline network that would allow third-party access to the gas pipelines and would help Beijing in its efforts to cut pollution by using more natural gas instead of coal. For several years, China has been studying merging the oil and gas pipeline assets of three of its state-held energy giants—China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Now the regulators are targeting to announce before the winter a decision to merge the three companies’ pipeline assets, estimated to be worth around US$78 billion (500 billion Chinese yuan), according to people with knowledge of the plans who spoke to Bloomberg . Sanford C. Bernstein & Co analysts have estimated that the Chinese […]