Research On Factors Affecting The Location Selection Of State-owned Energy Enterprises’ Outward Foreign Direct Investments

Energy is an important resource required for social development and a strategic resource related to a country’s economic and political security.As a large energy consumer,China is gradually expanding its energy supply and demand gap.Relying on a large amount of imported energy resources,it is difficult to maintain a long-term stable supply of domestic energy,making the overseas deployment of energy resources inevitable.Under the guidance of the "Going Global" strategy,state-owned energy enterprisess have gone abroad one after another to participate in international market competition."Where to invest" is the first step for state-owned energy enterprises to "go global",so location selection has become the primary issue for state-owned energy enterprises to solve in outward foreign direct investment.The thesis is based on the location selection theory and foreign direct investment theory,combined with the practical experience of China’s state-owned energy enterprises’ overseas investment,the paper summarizes the factors that affect the location selection of their foreign direct investment,and provides references for empirical research.Then sort out the foreign direct investment history of China’s state-owned energy enterprises,and use the "China Global Investment Tracking" database to sort out the data of state-owned energy enterprises’ foreign direct investment,analyze the status quo of state-owned energy enterprises’ foreign direct investment,and focus on describing the investment regions and countries of state-owned energy enterprises distributed.And according to the research method of geographic concentration in industrial economics,the Theil Entropy Index is used to measure the concentration of the regional distribution and country distribution of the foreign direct investment of state-owned energy enterprises.The results show that the regional investment of state-owned energy enterprises is relatively evenly distributed,but the country-specific investment presents a characteristic of concentrated distribution.On the basis of the above analysis,the paper uses the investment data of state-owned energy companies in 76 countries from 2005 to 2019 to empirically study the economic distance between China and the host country,the energy endowment and technological innovation capabilities of the host country,and other nine factors that affect the choice of location state-owned energy enterprises.According to the differences in national economic development,the sample countries are divided into developing economies and developed economies,and the samples are grouped and regressed.The empirical results show that the economic distance between China and the host country and the resource endowment of the host country will promote the investment of state-owned energy enterprises in the host country,while the technological innovation capability and infrastructure environment of the host country,the bilateral investment agreement,and the geographical distance between China and the host country will inhibit foreign investment direct of state-owned energy enterprises.In the grouped empirical evidence,the host country’s infrastructure environment and bilateral investment agreements have produced opposite results on the investment of state-owned energy companies in different economies.Then choose CNPC as a corporate case to analyze the current situation of CNPC foreign direct investment location distribution and the factors that affect its location selection.Finally,it provides suggestions and references on how state-owned energy enterprises can better choose the location of foreign direct investment.