PetroChina, the nation's largest oil producer, has set the price range of its A-share Initial Public Offering (IPO) at 15 to 16.7 yuan per share, the company announced on Wednesday.

If its IPO price is fixed at 16.7 yuan per share, the oil giant would be able to raise a record-breaking 66.8 billion yuan (about US$8.9 billion) from its imminent Shanghai listing, surpassing the 66.58 billion yuan achieved by China Shenhua Energy Company, the country's largest coal producer, earlier this month.

The company has been handed the green light from the country's securities watchdog to issue up to four billion A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Experts predicted PetroChina would finally issue the shares at the high end of the price range, a practice followed by recently returning red-chips such as China COSCO Holdings, China Construction Bank and Shenhua.

The price range was decided after the company staged a three-day consultation from October 22 to 24.

According to the company's prospectus, it will use 6.84 billion yuan and 5.93 billion yuan respectively to boost production capacity at its Changqing and Daqing oil fields. A total of 1.5 billion yuan will be used to build production facilities at Jidong field, the country's largest.

It also plans to invest 17.5 billion yuan to upgrade its Dushanzi oil refinery and ethylene facilities and six billion yuan in expanding an ethylene plant in Daqing, in northeast China.

PetroChina is the first of the country's three petrochemical giants including Sinopec and the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) to get listed on overseas stock market.

PetroChina began trading in Hong Kong and its American Depository Receipts were listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000.

Citic Securities Co., UBS Securities Co. and China International Capital Corp. are the main underwriters of the issue.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2007)