LOWER PRICES: Consumers select vegetables at a food market in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei Province. According to the Ministry of Commerce, food prices in 36 monitored cities fell after the Spring Festival (ZHU XUDONG)

Largest Foreign Takeover

China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) announced on February 26 that it has closed the deal to acquire Canada's Nexen Inc.

CNOOC, China's largest offshore oil and gas producer, said the company paid about $15.1 billion for Nexen's common and preferred shares.

Wang Yilin, Chairman of CNOOC, said the company is delighted to have acquired a leading international platform through the acquisition of Nexen.

Kevin Reinhart will continue to serve as CEO of Nexen, which will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of CNOOC.

Li Fanrong, CEO of CNOOC Ltd., a listed subsidiary of the group will chair the new Nexen board.

The deal was first announced in July 2012. It is the largest overseas acquisition ever made by a Chinese company.

China-ASEAN Link

A railway linking southwest China's Yunnan Province with the ASEAN countries came into operation on February 23 after seven years of construction.

The railway between Yuxi and Mengzi, both in Yunnan, is part of the eastern line of the planned Pan-Asia Railway network, an international railway project that will bring China closer with Southeast Asia.

The 141-km railway has a designed maximum speed of 120 km per hour. It passes through 35 tunnels and crosses 61 bridges, which together account for 54.95 percent of the eastern line's total length.

The eastern line also consists of the Kunming-Yuxi Railway, already in operation, and the Mengzi-Hekou Railway that is under construction and scheduled to be operational at the end of next year.

Petrochemical Cooperation

Sinopec Sichuan Vinylon Works Group and South Korea's SK Chemicals Co. Ltd. signed a joint venture contract on February 25 in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to build a butanediol (BDO) facility with an annual production volume of 200,000 tons.

The project, which includes production facilities for acetylene, formaldehyde and BDO, as well as other support projects, will cost 3.8 billion yuan ($605 million).

Located in the Changshou Economic-Technological Development Area, the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.

Upon completion, the project is expected to realize an annual sales volume of 4 billion yuan ($642.4 million) and pay 1.4 billion yuan ($224.8 million) in taxes each year.

The BDO project is a milestone for Chongqing in becoming a global natural gas industrial base, said Huang Qifan, Mayor of Chongqing. The petrochemical industry, especially the natural gas chemical industry, is one of the six pillar industries in Chongqing.

Sinopec is China's top oil refiner. SK is the third largest conglomerate in South Korea, with energy and communications as its two major businesses.