Tax Incentives for Energy Imports

On February 14, China’s Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs, and State Taxation Administration jointly issued a notice outlining import tax incentives for energy resource exploration and utilization during the 2026–2030 period. The policy exempts import tariffs on equipment and tools used in offshore oil and gas self-operated projects and emergency pipeline rescue projects when such items cannot be domestically produced. For offshore Sino-foreign cooperative projects, qualified imports are exempt from both tariffs and import VAT. Additionally, certain imported natural gas volumes will receive partial VAT rebates to support supply security and price stability.

PetroChina Expands CBM in Shanxi

Shanxi authorities have accepted the environmental impact assessment for PetroChina’s Linfen Branch Phase II capacity project at the Daji Coalbed Methane (CBM) Field. With a total investment of RMB 15.46 billion and designed annual capacity of 1.5 billion cubic meters, the two-year project targets deep CBM development in the eastern Ordos Basin. Daji, China’s first successful deep coal-rock gas demonstration field, has produced over 3 billion cubic meters cumulatively. PetroChina plans three development phases totaling 3.5 billion cubic meters in capacity, with overall investment expected to exceed RMB 40 billion, supporting Shanxi’s goal of boosting CBM output to 30 billion cubic meters by 2030.

Shengli Builds AI “Digital Reservoir”

Shengli Oilfield’s Geophysical Research Institute has developed and continuously upgraded an AI-enabled “digital reservoir” technology that works like an “intelligent CT scan” for mature fields. By integrating seismic, logging, drilling and long-term production data, the system builds 3D (and time-updated) reservoir models to reduce uncertainty in thin, fragmented and deeply buried targets and to pinpoint dispersed remaining oil. Key advances include neural-network-based stratigraphic correlation, semi-supervised property prediction and data-driven remaining-oil simulation, boosting modeling efficiency by over tenfold and improving prediction accuracy. The technology has been applied across 26 blocks to support 88 well deployments, adding nearly 300,000 tonnes of oil and lifting recovery by about 2.5 percentage points.