State-owned enterprises and privately held and multinational companies have accelerated their expansion into Xinjiang's energy oil, coal, and natural gas businesses.  Resources are in turn becoming more fully tapped and optimized, and Xinjiang's business environment has matured.

With China’s accession into the WTO, the country is obligated to fully open up its petrochemical industry by the end of 2006. While the transitory period is almost over, the local petrochemical industry finds a double-edged sword hanging right on its neck; a sword sharpened by scarce resources and increased environmental concerns.

As a consequence of rising international prices of crude oil and natural gas, there are emerging interests in the development of coal-chemical industry. Are prospects as good as investors want to believe?

Despite lingering safety and environmental problems, foreign investors continue to put in resources to China’s chemical industry positive of the growing market demands for chemical products.

China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) is in talks with potential investors about the stock-market listing of its chemical fertilizer unit to raise as much as 400 million US dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Fixed assets investment in China's petroleum and chemical industry rose by 36.3 percent in the first half with surplus production capacity emerging in some sectors, People’s Daily reported.

Germany’s Lansexx AG said it is of surging demand to transfer the chemical plant from Texas to Shandong China, reported Wall Street Journal.

China’s State Environmental Protection Council released a report on Tuesday, announcing 45% of the country’s chemical plants pose grave risks to the environment, Xinhua news agency reports. Environmental safety measures need to be strengthened to ease the problem resulted from decades of disorganization of chemical industry distribution.

Microsoft new POS targets at Chinese market in which retail and service industry invest over tens of million US Dollars in information technology every year, as local International Financial Times reported.

Within the next five years, Guangdong could become an Asian center for petrochemicals, China Oil News reports....