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The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's central planning agency, will offer preferential pricing to private investors in order to spur their involvement in unconventional gas projects, the NDRC said on Friday.

The policy forms part of guidelines issued by the NDRC to stoke private investment in energy and public utilities, and follows a series of statements issued last month by government departments in support of greater private investment in the unconventional energy sector.

The Chinese government will continue reforming domestic gas pricing so that it reflects the market value of the commodity, the NDRC said, adding that wellhead prices of shale gas, coalbed methane and coal gas would be determined by the market rather than set by the state.

The NDRC also pledged tougher action on reducing or exempting fees and charges on companies, and said it would improve transparency of information regarding prices and charges for private firms.

The NDRC's guidelines drew a mixed response from industry experts. Further pricing reforms will benefit Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Co. Ltd. as gas prices are too low at present, Wang Yuqin, secretary of the privately held company's board, told Interfax on Friday. Guanghui operates three coal gas liquefaction projects in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with combined output capacity in excess of one billion cubic meters per year.

But a Shanghai-based analyst who asked to remain anonymous said Beijing's gas pricing reforms still have a long way to go and that not all stakeholders would accept market pricing of unconventional gas.

Upstream producers in China would welcome a market pricing mechanism that reflects the high cost of developing domestic unconventional resources, but downstream consumers are unlikely to tolerate prices significantly higher than what they pay now, said the analyst.

Distributors and consumers would shun unconventional gas if conventionally produced gas is a cheaper option, the analyst said. Breaking the state monopoly on China's long-distance gas transmission networks would be a major step towards ensuring market pricing of unconventional gas is successfully adopted, the analyst added without elaborating.

Gas utilization has surged in China on the back of consumer prices that are considerably lower than the rest of the world. Residential gas prices are set low by officials to encourage use, while industrial users cannot afford to pay higher prices, according to the analyst.