Chinese offshore oil and gas company CNOOC agreed Saturday to buy 2.6 million tons of liquefied natural gas from French utility GDF Suez SA. The deal, signed in Shanghai with CNOOC's wholly owned CNOOC Gas and Power Group, calls for France's partially state-owned gas and electric company to provide the LNG over four years, beginning in 2013, executives of GDF Suez told reporters. GDF said it could not provide a dollar value for the deal, the equivalent of 44 LNG cargoes, at the request of CNOOC. But a similar deal last month to provide 2.5 million tons of LNG to South Korea was reportedly valued at about $1 billion, the Associated Press reported.
