Sinopec Corp. has reached an agreement with its parent company China Petrochemical Corp. to form a joint venture to buy $3 billion worth of oil and gas assets in a bit to boost profitability.

The deal is expected to improve the proven reserves of Sinopec Corp. by 9.1% to 3.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent. It would also boost its annual product of crude oil by 11.2% to 365 million barrels.

A year ago, Sinopec Corp. revealed plans for purchasing more overseas upstream assets from its parent to improve its production of oil and gas and to prevent further losses resulting from selling gasoline and diesel at state-controlled prices.

Sinopec Group dished out around $40 billion just to buy assets in the last 3 years. These included the purchase of Swiss explorer Addax Petroleum Corp. for $7.24 billion in 2009.