'Dramatic changes ahead for SOEs'

China's biggest state-owned companies will see "dramatic changes" in the next few years as they will have to downsize and become more efficient, according to the former chairman of two of the country's biggest producers.

Chinese oil companies have "tremendous room" to improve efficiency and will be "suffering for the next few years" amid the oil crash that has pushed prices down to roughly half their value from mid-2014, said Fu Chengyu, former chairman of both Cnooc Ltd and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, known as Sinopec. Domestic producers need at least $60 a barrel to stabilize China's slumping oil production, he said.

"We are a big elephant already," Fu said in New York City on Tuesday at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. "If we don't move faster, reform ourselves faster, we will become a dinosaur."