Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan met Sechin, Secretary-General of the Russian Presidential Energy Development Strategy and Ecological Security Committee in Beijing on the 17th of February. There are very broad prospects for Sino-Russian energy cooperation as China and Russia both have their own needs and advantages in resources, markets, capital and technology, said Wang Qishan. Russia is willing to work with China to comprehensively expand energy cooperation, including oil and gas trade, investment and finance, said Sechin.

CNPC Economic and Technical Research Institute has released the “2012 Development Report on Domestic and International Oil and Gas Industry”, which claimed that China's private enterprises have gradually accelerated the pace to enter the oil and gas industry, and have achieved a certain size and influence in some areas. The report said that private enterprises are involved in a number of oil and gas exploration and mining operations in Daqing, Jilin, Xinjiang, Changqing, Tuha Oilfields by means of holding shares in state-owned oil companies and getting involved in the project cooperation. According to the statistics of China Federation of Petroleum and Petrochemical, as of August 2012, 32 private enterprises are engaged in oil exploration, 9 in natural gas extraction, 64 in oil and gas mining ancillary activities.

In a recently published report entitled "Energy Technology Perspectives", the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that the shortage in global investment in clean energy is distressing, and called on countries to put in an additional investment of US$36 trillion in the next 40 years. The figure of US$36 trillion in clean energy required by the IEA may seem huge but, but in fact it is only 35% higher than the world’s total investment in energy infrastructure by 2050. IEA pointed out that the investment equates to US$130 per person per year, but will eventually reduce the energy costs of US$150 trillion in 2050, because the free sources of clean energy such as wind, solar and geothermal mean huge savings in more fossil fuel funds.