Bloomberg: Oil Price Slump Spurs CNPC to Focus on Natural Gas and Cut Costs

Stung by the slump in crude oil prices, China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s biggest energy producer, said it will speed up natural gas exploration in 2015 and take “revolutionary measures” to cut costs.

CNPC also signaled its caution on the outlook for crude by pledging to focus on domestic oil and gas fields over foreign projects, according to comments from Chairman Zhou Jiping posted to the state-owned company’s website today.

CNPC is using its annual work conference in Beijing, which runs from Sunday through Tuesday, to set its strategy for the year ahead. Zhou’s comments follows a steep cut in Citigroup Inc.’s 2015 target price on the company’s main listed unit, PetroChina Co., citing the impact of lower oil prices.

Big oil companies are ratcheting back investment and costs as they deal with a 56 percent drop in the price of Brent crude since June due to a global glut. CNPC and its state-owned peers are also in the throes of delivering on government-mandated reforms to give markets a more decisive say in China’s economy. MORE