Oil’s plunge has reordered the pecking order among China’s biggest explorers. (Bloomberg) — Oil’s plunge has reordered the pecking order among China’s biggest explorers. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp.’s move to close some high-cost fields has caused it to slip to number three in oil and gas production as rival Cnooc Ltd. got a boost from new domestic offshore projects. Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, produced almost 472 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2015, down 1.7 percent. Cnooc overtook it by pumping about 496 million, jumping nearly 15 percent. PetroChina Co. remained the largest, at 1.49 million barrels. “Sinopec has the most mature exploration and production portfolio of the all three Chinese oil majors,” said Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “For Cnooc, however, offshore China still has legs to grow. Strong reserves replacement by Cnooc suggests that they can stabilize […]