China appoints CNPC executive as top energy official
Zhang Jianhua, general-manager of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), was appointed as the new head of the National Energy Administration (NEA) on Wednesday, becoming the first senior executive of a State-owned enterprise (SOE) to take charge of the country’s top oil regulatory agency.
Zhang, who had worked in the domestic petroleum and petrochemical industry for over 30 years, has different career paths compared to his predecessors such as Liu Tienan and Nur Bekri, who had worked years in administrative institutions, domestic news website thepaper.cn reported on Wednesday. Before becoming the general manager of CNPC, he worked as a front-line employee in the oil refinery and production sectors.
Zhang is also the member of a 19th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.
Former head of NEA Nur Bekri was dismissed from his position as the deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission and head of the NEA in October, according to the Xinhua News Agency. He is being investigated for suspected serious violations of Party disciplinary rules and laws.
After graduating from East China University of Science and Technology in 1986, Zhang began to work at a petrochemical and refinery firm in Shanghai, which later became the subsidiary of CNPC. Since January 2005, he was made a senior executive at CNPC and was in charge of several ethylene projects including 800,000-ton-South Korea-China ethylene project in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province.