Foreign oil companies will soon be able to invest in China’s upstream sector through joint ventures with the country’s three major fossil fuel companies, according to a new manifesto by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party. The guidelines lay the groundwork for the liberalization of the Asian country’s energy production game, similar to the initiative spearheaded by Mexican President Enrique Nieto in 2014, which opened the nation’s fossil fuel industry to the world for the first time in nearly eight decades. Unfortunately for Mexico, just weeks after the country became open for business with foreign companies, oil prices crashed for the first time. Investment in oil exploration and extraction shrunk drastically as the industry’s biggest players published multibillion sales of owned assets. New funding for oil and gas has been hard to come by since the fall. Last year, global investment in upstream activities fell 23 percent […]