Leading international energy company Royal Dutch Shell Group is shifting its new growth target to growing markets with high returns, especially China and other leading Asian countries.

Rob Routs, executive downstream director of the Shell Group, said in Beijing on Monday that Shell's new development strategy would focus on the growing markets in the world, such as China, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine and Thailand, which may become Shell's new growth points.

Shell, which suffered a profit decline in the third quarter of this year due to the sluggish global oil refining market, is adjusting its development strategy by peeling off some low-profit business including closing some refineries, and increasing investment and expanding business in some new growing markets, said Routs.

Routs stressed that China has become one of its most important markets, and he added that the openness of the Chinese market and China's strategy to pursue sustainable development has provided great opportunities for Shell to expand downstream business in the country, ranging from fuels, lubricants, bitumen to chemicals businesses.

Shell's largest project in China, the 4.3-billion-dollar China National Offshore Oil Corporation-Shell Petrochemical Corporation in Daya Bay in south China's Guangdong Province, which began operation in early 2006, operates well, he said.

With an annual output capacity of 2.3 million tons of petrochemical products, the project's total production has reached 1.7 million tons so far in 2007.

Shell became the leading international oil company in China's lubricants market in 2006 following the acquisition of a 75 percent share of Beijing Tongyi Petroleum Chemical Company Ltd and Tongyi Petroleum Chemical (Xianyang) Company Limited.

Routs said the purchase, finished September 2006, has given Shell the third largest share of China's rapidly-growing lubricants market.

Currently, sales of Shell-brand lubricants continue a double-digit growth, and Shell has five lubricants blending plants in operation with the sixth one to be built in the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong.

"We plan to further expand our retain business in China in the future," said Routs, who also noted that the form of investment will depend on the "opening of local market and its profit ratio", under the condition that a stable oil supply is guaranteed.