Chevron opens office to back gasfield

US oil and gas producer Chevron Corp opened an office in Sichuan's Dazhou to support its Chuandongbei natural gas operation in the province.

The move comes after a 30-year production-sharing deal was signed in December by Chevron and PetroChina, the listed subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) - the nation's biggest oil and gas producer.

At nearly 2,000-sq-km, the CNPC-Chevron gasfield in the onshore Sichuan Basin is the largest inland exploration project with foreign involvement in China.