ENGIE, China Investment Corporation Sign Energy MoU

France’s ENGIE and China Investment Corporation (CIC) signed energy related MoU in Paris on Tuesday.

The memorandum was signed on the occasion of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to France.

Under the new agreement ENGIE and CIC would cooperate in the areas of large energy projects, particularly renewable energy projects in fast developing countries and in new technologies and in energy efficiency fields, especially in China.

The cooperation between ENGIE and CIC started in 2011. It was notably marked by the establishment of shareholder relationship in ENGIE’s exploration and production activities in which CIC holds a 30 percent ownership interest.

“Today’s MoU is the consolidation of the two parties’ cooperation in the past years, and it keeps pace with their new strategies. The MoU also illustrates their common vision on the transition to a low carbon economy at a global scale,” the French firm said in a statement Tuesday.

In natural gas, ENGIE signed a worldwide partnership in 2011 with the Chinese sovereign fund CIC granting the latter a 30 percent share in ENGIE exploration and production activities. The Group sold 2.3 million metric tons of LNG to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), with deliveries beginning in 2013, and installed the first floating regasification terminal in China. In 2012, ENGIE also began a cooperation agreement with PetroChina to explore the upstream gas potential in Qatar, then extended the agreement to gas storage in China in 2013. The Group currently assists Shanghai Gas Group, a unit of Shenergy Group, for the expansion of one of its LNG terminals.