ok, ok...THIS is the last one...promise.
Fuel-hungry China goes far afield to secure oil
By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Associated Press
DAKAR, Senegal — The West African nation of Gabon isn't one of the world's more high-profile countries. So why a state visit by China's leader?
That's easy: oil.
Burning fuel at a record pace to run an economy in overdrive, China, since late last year, has claimed the No. 2 spot in world oil imports, second only to the United States. And jostling with the world's other oil gulpers, China's leaders are looking far afield for a secure oil supply, locking down tough-term deals with easy-term cash.
China, the United States, Japan, Europe and, increasingly, India — all leery of dependence on the volatile Middle East — are elbowing each other in a rush to nontraditional oil sources in West Africa, the Caspian Sea region, Russia, South America and elsewhere.
That's what brought Chinese President Hu Jintao to Gabon this week. He opened the three-day state visit — his only sub-Saharan stop on a four-nation tour — pledging lasting, lucrative friendship between resource-rich Africa and resource-voracious China.
China's broadening of drilling and mining in Africa comes "with the aim of promoting development by the principle of 'win-win,' " Hu told Gabon's lawmakers Monday. He spoke in a parliament building being rebuilt by no-interest Chinese loans.
On the sidelines, China, Gabon and France's Total Gabon oil firm signed a multimillion-dollar series of deals guaranteeing China a set, steady flow of Gabonese oil. Despite any rival bids or Gabon's own declining supplies, "it means that Gabon will always have to make oil available ... to sell to China," Oil Minister Onouviet explained proudly on Gabonese radio.
The Chinese leader moved yesterday to Algeria — a north African nation absorbed in its struggle against a bloody Islamic extremist group, and a no-go zone for most world leaders. But Hu has a particular reason to visit Algeria — the hundreds of millions of dollars China has invested in refineries there since last year.
And back in China, the economy — booming at 9.9 percent annual, with business and family-car ownership surging — is waiting to see what Hu brings home from his oil trip.
China is driving global demand, hard.
"It's sucking up a lot of the world's oil resources," said Antoine Halff, demand specialist at the International Energy Agency. "It's a large market and steep growth, and it's not getting the oil it's looking for."
According to recent Oil Market Report issued by International Energy Agency (IEA), China will need 5.8 million barrels of oil every day in 2004. Official statistics showed that the volume of imported oil has increased from over 20 million tons to 70 million tons from 1996 to 2002. China imported approximately 1.4 million barrels of crude oil per day in the international market during the time, the report added.
Until very recently, China, like the West and Japan, largely had been looking for oil imports where everyone else was — the Middle East, source of 60 percent of Chinese oil imports. But increasingly, the world's powers are questioning the wisdom of leaving national economies to rest on the explosive region.
The result is an oil boom in places like West Africa. In Angola, Nigeria, Gabon and other oil-producing states, China and other Asian nations in 2003 competed aggressively with Europe and the United States for deals.
It can be easier for China, which doesn't have to worry as much as Western oil companies about criticism of foreign partnerships, said Galvin Hayman of London-based Global Witness, which calls for transparency in international oil deals.
For example, when a Canadian company pulled out of Sudan in 2002 amid complaints that oil was helping fund civil war, Asian partnerships led by China, India and Malaysia in 2003 moved in.
"China has a willingness to go to places where others may have constraints — in the Sudan, for instance," said Halff, with the International Energy Agency.
"They have their agenda, and they are acting according to their agenda," Halff said. "Their primary concern is to ensure sufficient supply, and sufficient diversified supply."
But industry analysts say China today may be sinking some of its money into questionable sources of supply such as Kazakstan, Peru, and Gabon. Exploring wells now increasingly are coming up dry — suggesting Gabon may soon be tapped out.
seattletimes.nwsource.com |
