China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, the country's top refiner, has agreed to buy 50 percent of the US-based Chesapeake Energy Corp's Mississippi Lime oil and gas assets for $1.02 billion, the latest move by a Chinese oil company in North America.

Experts said it's important for China to improve its shale gas development technology and learn from the United States, which brought the shale gas revolution to the global energy industry.

"The investment scale of Sinopec this time is much smaller than the ($15.1 billlion) CNOOC-Nexen deal," said Liao Na, vice-president of ICIS C1 Energy, a Shanghai-based energy consultancy.