Li Shaolin, president of PetroChina International America Inc, says Houston, as the oil capital of the world, is a good place for the Chinese oil giant's American operation to expand its business. May Zhou / China Daily

After moving its headquarters from New Jersey to Houston earlier this year, PetroChina International America Inc is now primed to expand its trade in oil products, and more importantly, plant a firmer footing in North America by acquiring its own refining facilities.

For seven years since 2005, Li Shaolin, president of PetroChina International America Inc, had been running American operations from New Jersey, but the advantages that Houston - the so-called "Oil Capital of the World" - had to offer were too big a draw to resist.

Li moved headquarters there in March, taking offices at the prestigious One Briar Lake Plaza in Houston's Westchase District adjacent to the energy corridor.

Gazing down at the traffic from his 13th-floor office, Li said, "This flowing freeway is symbolic of what we do: move crude oil, refined oil, natural gas and petrochemicals to trade."

Beijing-based PetroChina is one of the world's largest crude oil producers and traders. In the first half of 2013, it recorded a crude oil output of 464 million barrels, representing an increase of 2.6 percent compared with the same period in 2012; a natural gas output of 1,397.5 billion cubic feet, representing an increase of 8 percent; and an oil and natural gas equivalent output 697 million barrels, representing a 4.4 percent rise.

"The Houston office started in 2008," Li said. "Back then, I sent only one person here, but I asked this lone person to rent an office big enough for 40 people."

Li's vision of growth materialized. By the beginning of this year the Houston staff had outgrown the original office space and Li rented the entire 13th floor - a space big enough to accommodate 120 to 140 employees.

"We signed a 10-year lease," he said. "I am confident we will expand so much that in three years we will need 140 employees to run our American operation."

Indeed, since March, Li has increased his Houston staff to over 50. "And we are still in the process of hiring more people, including traders, market analysts and accountants," Li said.

As a newcomer to Houston and longtime dweller in northern regions both in China and the US, Li does not have many nice things to say about Houston's hot summer days, but here the business environment is as hot as its summer, and that's what he cares about. "Houston's economy is very vibrant and prosperous, and it has been one of the top three cities in job creation in the past three years.

"As the capital of oil, Houston is home to pretty much all the major petroleum companies in the world. Upstream, midstream and downstream operations of the petroleum industry are all in Houston, all and every aspect of the petroleum business is here, and it is truly quite convenient to conduct business with clients and partners," he said.

According to Li, PetroChina International America is mostly doing business in midstream and downstream sectors involving refining, pipeline and storage tankers in the entire Americas region - from Canada and the northern US to Latin America. Its business has been growing steadily since it first started, with an average yearly growth of 27 percent - doubling every three to four years.

"We basically buy petroleum products at Point A, move them to Point B and do some processing for added value, and then move them to Point C to sell," Li explained.

"Currently, our daily trade volume of petroleum products (crude oil, refined oil, natural gas and petrochemicals) is about 1.5 million barrels a day. For 2013, we will have a total trade volume of 75-to-80 million tons - the equivalent of the total production volume of Daqing oilfield in one year," Li said.

Li said that PetroChina's trade activity has grown so significantly that a lot of the big oil companies were starting to keep a watchful eye on them. To Li, this is business as usual. "The cake is only so big, if we take a bigger slice, someone else will have to take less," he said.

In the next few years Li has two major missions he would like to accomplish: strengthen his trade team and invest in a refinery, either through a merger and acquisition or by participation in a joint venture with a North American company.

The bolstered trade team would help them expand to more areas in Canada, the US and places in Latin America such as El Salvador and Brazil, he said.

Owning a refinery is Li Shaolin's next big dream, and he's quite determined to pursue this goal because, as he says, a "refinery is an important platform to facilitate the development and expansion of our petroleum trade." And Houston is the new command center to make that dream come true.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 11/22/2013 page13)