Aiming at becoming the biggest private oil and gas service company in Southeast Asia, LandOcean Energy Service Co Ltd will expand its business into the exploration sector for the first time in 2011.

The company is preparing to explore some oil fields in Chinese territories and abroad. The details of the projects are under discussion, says Yin Xudong, vice-president of the company.

"We are making efforts to make our company become more comprehensive and competitive in the global market," he says.

He says that the company's overseas projects will make up as much as 70 percent of its total business this year, showing a 20 percent growth from 2010.

The company started to get involved in the international market a decade ago by cooperating with the nation's three State-owned oil companies - China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), but now its business has been flourishing without the big three.

Now 70 percent of the company's overseas business is not directly related with them.

They have independent projects in countries including Brazil and Ecuador in South America and other businesses in Indonesia, Malaysia and countries in the Middle East.

The company plans to participate more in the global energy market using its advanced technologies and rich skill base.

Established in 2001 by both overseas and domestic businessmen, the company now has more than 400 employees. Five percent of them are former students who have returned from overseas.

It has also set up offices in Houston in the United States and Calgary in Canada.

Yin says the development of the Chinese oil and gas industry is a history of innovation and creation of which the key is new technology.

"Our employees have great experience of working with complex geological phenomena and the technologies are developed from that. We therefore have certain advantages compared with foreign companies," Yin says.

The vice-president says the government had provided preferential policies for the development of companies in the Zhongguancun National Innovation Demonstration Zone, a hot spot in Beijing for entrepreneurship and investment in China's high-technology industry. That was the reason why it chose Zhongguancun as its base at its launch.

"We enrolled 20 to 30 graduates over the past two years from universities including Peking University, Tsinghua University and China University of Petroleum in the zone. They are excellent at software skills and the knowledge of geophysics that we require. The abundant skills resource is also an attraction of the zone," Yin says.

The government gives financial, policy and research support to the high-tech companies in the zone. Yin says older, talented people who have returned from overseas like him can get 1 million yuan from the local government in relocation grants, team-building funds and to pay for academic research.

The gross revenue of all the companies in the zone reached 1.55 trillion yuan (161 billion yuan) in 2010, accounting for 19.2 percent of the capital's gross domestic product, according to official figures.