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Gold/Mining/Energy : Lundin Oil (LOILY, LOILB Sweden) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (2520)	6/18/2001 10:01:38 AM
From: Tomas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2742

China National Petroleum Corp: "Sudan will be the bright spot" China CNPC sees Sudan pillar for overseas ambition By Chen Aizhu SINGAPORE, June 18 (Reuters) - Leading state oil company China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has targetted Sudan as the centrepiece of its ambitions to triple overseas production by 2005, Chinese industry officials said on Monday. In a move to cut soaring import bills as domestic crude production plateaus, CNPC plans to bring its foreign oil output to 15 million tonnes in 2005, up from last year's five million. ``CNPC has small production sources here and there, but Sudan will be the bright spot,'' said a Beijing-based senior industry official. China now imports one out of four barrels of oil it consumes. CNPC, parent of PetroChina (NYSE:PTR - news), is the first and most aggressive state oil firm to hunt for oil beyond China. It aims to establish two new oilfields in Sudan with a combined output of nine million tonnes per year (180,000 barrels per day), the source said. This is on top of its biggest overseas windfall, the nearly two year old 225,000 bpd Unity field now operated by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company Ltd (GNPOC), of which CNPC owns 40 percent. GNPOC pools investment from state oil Sudapec with a five percent stake, Malaysian state oil company Petronas with 30 percent and Canadian independent Talisman Energy Inc (Toronto:TLM.TO - news) with 25 percent. CNPC is currently carrying out exploration work at two new fields with plans to set up a 60,000-bpd production capacity in Sudan 3-7 by the end of next year and 120,000-bpd at Sudan 6 in late 2003, said the source. Both are located near the Unity fields in southern Sudan. CNPC owns some 33 percent in Sudan 3-7, with fellow shareholders a Qatar consortium and Sudapec, while holding a majority stake in the bigger Sudan 6. POLITICS BRUSHED ASIDE The economic rewards from Sudan, where CNPC has reaped a revenue of over $600 million since September 1999, outweigh the political risks of involvement in the war-torn African state, industry officials said. ``CNPC as an oil company was looking at Sudan from a commercial perspective...It is not totally ignoring the political factors, but at the end of the day politics serves the economics,'' an official with Chinese government thinktank Energy Research Institute said. Oil firms operating in Sudan came under fire again recently as the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that would prohibit foreign companies from listing on the U.S. stock exchange if they engage in oil exploration in Sudan. Critics have charged that oil firms, by providing revenue to the Islamist government in Sudan's North, were helping fund its war against Christian and tribal rebels in the south. CNPC also produces oil in Peru, Venezuela and Khazakstan, but Sudan is the only big success story. In 2000, Sudan took up about two thirds of the 5.09 million tonnes CNPC produced overseas. About two 900,000-barrel cargoes a month of Sudanese Nile blend crude, similar to China's top grade Daqing, have been placed to a number of Chinese refineries in the last two years, sources said. CNPC, to avoid political difficulties, extracted its overseas assets from its listing vehicle PetroChina, when it sold $3.1-billion worth of shares in its initial stock offer in New York and Hongkong in April 2000. biz.yahoo.com