Houston energy expo welcomes more Chinese attendees

The world\'s largest energy exploration and production gathering, which opened here on Thursday, welcomes more Chinese participants, an expo official said Thursday. \"I am hoping for a larger Chinese investment, so we are really hoping to see some of Chinese companies to come for that,\" Martin Schardt, the executive vice president of NAPE, told Xinhua. The bi-annual North American Prospect Expo (NAPE), held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in the U.S. oil city of Houston, provides a marketplace for the buying, selling and trading of oil and gas prospects and producing properties via exhibit booths and is mainly focused on the upstream industry, which has seen \"solid growth\" in recent years. \"There is a great opportunity for China and NAPE to work together at some point,\" he said, adding that more and more Chinese faces are turning up at the expo, which is expected to attract more than 5,000 participants and 400 exhibitors producing properties and prospects across the United States and around the world. The expo is scheduled to end on Friday.