China's biggest oil firm PetroChina will invite major foreign oil companies to help the State-owned company explore for oil and gas in as many as nine blocks in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The new blocks are mainly distributed throughout the southwestern, central and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin, which has proven reserves of 6 billion tons of oil and 8 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, the Beijing-based company said in a statement on its website.

The move marks the most significant co-operation with foreign giants in oil and gas exploration in the past 12 years, analysts said.

More gas discoveries in the northwestern region will increase source supplies to the 3,800-kilometre-long natural gas pipeline, which extends from Xinjiang in the west to coastal cities in the east, PetroChina said.

PetroChina will partner with foreign firms through product-sharing contracts and "several major international oil companies" have expressed interest, the statement said, without elaborating on which firms.

The overseas-listed company said it would enlist state-of-the-art technology worldwide to tap the huge energy potential in the northwestern region.

Yuan Xinxiang, a PetroChina spokesman, told China Daily on Friday that the listed firm, instead of the parent company China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), would handle the nine new blocks in Xinjiang. But he declined to further disclose exactly when the company would start the tendering, although the company statement said "in the short term."

Foreign oil companies including Exxon Mobil, Total SA, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell Plc were not available for comments on Friday.

"I am not aware of the new information and I could not comment," said a Shell official.

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