CALGARY — China is counting on “breakthroughs in energy trade” with Canada to help fuel economic growth in the world’s most populous country, one of the country’s top diplomats said Thursday.

Speaking to a Calgary business crowd, Zhang Junsai, China’s ambassador to Canada, said his country is prepared to “deepen” ties with Canada on infrastructure development to help move the country’s oil and natural gas to the West Coast for export.

China’s state-backed energy companies “are watching the development of infrastructure, including pipelines of oil, pipelines of gas,” he said, addressing a question from the floor. So long as there are no political obstacles, “definitely they will come and invest into that.”

He declined to elaborate or take questions from reporters. China’s state-backed companies have poured US$30-billion into Canada’s oil sands and natural gas assets as of the end of last year, he said in prepared remarks.

The total includes a portion of the $100-million Enbridge Inc. raised from a group of producers and refiners to help usher its $6.6-billion Northern Gateway pipeline through the regulatory process.

PetroChina, China’s largest oil and gas producer, also holds a 20% interest in the Royal Dutch Shell-led LNG Canada development planned for B.C.’s northwest coast — one of three projects approved to export gas. The companies are assessing a plant capable of exporting up to 12 million tonnes of liquefied gas, or two billion cubic feet a day.

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“We should have more breakthroughs in energy trade,” Mr. Zhang said. “Should the large-scale export of Canada’s crude oil and gas going to China materialize, it is very likely that Canada’s trade balance with China will turn from deficit to surplus.”

China and India are expected to account for 94% of net oil-demand growth and 30% for gas over the next 20 years, Mr. Zhang said. “Asia’s role as the world’s major energy consumer and a strategic buyer will become more prominent,” the ambassador said.

Canada’s bid to capitalize on the shifting energy demand faces serious obstacles, with pipeline proposals drawing the ire of environmentalists and LNG export projects up against high capital costs and new competition from the United States.

At the same time, a number of companies, including Marathon Oil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and Murphy Oil Corp. have struggled to sell assets in Alberta’s oil sands as export constraints and gyrating oil prices weigh on returns.

We should have more breakthroughs in energy trade

New rules introduced by Ottawa in the wake of Cnooc Ltd.’s $15.1-billion purchase of Nexen Inc. that bar state-backed companies from taking controlling interests in the resource also effectively removed a category of buyer from the market.

Mr. Zhang said the rule changes created a “more transparent policy framework for foreign investors” but he did not elaborate.

Ottawa has contemplated further tweaks to the Investment Canada Act in its budget implementation bill.

Such changes would broaden the definition of state-ownership and potentially subject minority purchases of natural gas and oil sands assets to a net-benefit review, according to lawyers at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

Admiral Nirmal Verma, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said this month the tweaks would “add considerable uncertainty” to potential LNG investments by that country’s state-run energy companies.

Mr. Zhang said Alberta is a “land flowing with oil and gas. But where are they going?”

The ambassador’s message “is diplomatic, but clear enough: that future large-scale Chinese in-flow investment will have to depend on how infrastructure is going,” said Wenran Jiang, an advisor on Asia to the Alberta government.

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