Total and China national oil corp sign expanded LNG agreement

France's oil giant Total and China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) on Wednesday inked a new supply agreement for the supply of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and agreed a review of existing agreements and prices, the French company said in a statement. The deal was signed during a State visit here by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who arrived in France Tuesday for three-days of talks. President Francois Hollande announced Wednesday after bilateral talks that the two nations had signed contracts and investment deals worth USD 25 billion, including an Airbus contract for 70 planes worth an estimated catalogue price of USD 10 billion. Total said in its statement that it had agreed to supply China with an additional one million tons per year of LNG on top of the one million it already supplies to CNOOC under an existing 15-year agreement signed in 2010. The two companies will also review the price for the existing supply while setting a framework for the new additional quantities. Total supplies more than 8.0 percent of the Chinese market for LNG and has delivered 5.0 million tons of LNG to China in the period from 2010 to 2014. China is expected to see strong growth in demand in the coming years and CNOOC is already the third-largest global LNG importer with about 13 million tons annually.