An executive for the SInopec Group is seeking to sell half of its holdings in the two biggest shale gas acreages in Canada. The move is designed to spread its costs and accelerate development as the Chinese firm refocuses on its return on investment.

The sale of an overseas asset would be rare for one of China's state owned energy firms. Many companies have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars in investing in these energy resources all across the globe to secure the energy needs of the world's second largest economy.

According to Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp for North American operations Chairman Feng Zhiqiang, "We are not only buyers but also actively seek joint venture partners to optimize assets. There is no such thing that a state-owned company's job is only to obtain resources. Scale is important, profitable scale is more so."

Feng did not peg a price tag for the stakes to be sold in the shale acreages. He did say that the combined recoverable reserves were estimated to be in the tens of trillion of cubic feet of oil product.