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HONG KONG/NEW YORK – China's top offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd agreed to pay $1.1 billion for a stake in a U.S. shale oil and gas field, testing the market for the first time since its 2005 failed bid for Unocal.

CNOOC shares hit a three-year high on news of the deal with Chesapeake Energy Corp, which could be the start of more outbound acquisitions as the Chinese company races to meet its aggressive production growth forecasts to feed the country's fast-growing economy, analysts and bankers said.

"We expect them to expand their footprint in the Canadian oil-sands and also in Brazil's deepwater. That's the last frontier where you can extract big oil volumes," said Gordon Kwan, head of Asian energy research for Mirae Asset Securities, adding that Nigeria and Angola could also be attractive.

Canadian oil firm Opti Canada Inc and its peer Nexen Inc have drawn interest from CNOOC, Asia- and Canada-based bankers have said in recent months.

CNOOC, along with its peer Sinopec Group, is also bidding for stakes in assets owned by Brazilian oil and gas start-up OGX SA in a potential $7 billion deal, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said in mid-September.

The 10 deals so far this year for China's oil and gas companies have been worth $18.6 billion, already eclipsing the $15.8 billion in deals for all of 2009, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Most of the outbound acquisitions by China's oil firms have been in risky areas such as Africa, which Western rivals have avoided, or in locations with ageing assets.

Now they are also eying the United States, which was once deemed off limits to the Chinese due to protectionist sentiment.

"Ninety-five percent of the world's E&P (exploration and production) companies are in North America," said an Asia-based investment banker who has advised Chinese oil firms on outbound deals. "If you have to move the reserve needle, you have to buy U.S. companies."

U.S. oil and gas companies are gradually warming to Chinese investment, partly because their companies are now short of cash, Kwan of Mirae Asset said.

In contrast, China's state oil giants including PetroChina and Sinopec have access to ample credit, giving them more firepower to execute deals.

No regulatory hurdles
The Chesapeake agreement shows that China is confident that the purchase of a 33 percent stake in the Eagle Ford acreage in South Texas will get the backing of U.S. regulators and politicians, who stepped in five years ago to block CNOOC's effort to buy U.S. oil company Unocal.

Outside the energy realm, political concerns have also surfaced from time to time involving efforts by Huawei HWT.UL, China's top telecoms equipment maker, to crack the U.S. market.

While U.S.-China tensions over the value of China's currency persist, ties between the two countries have grown since 2005, with China becoming a major global economic force.