<109188807"> Cina, economia, energia NYT 05-07-09
I giganti petroliferi della Cina vogliono rispettabilità e potere
Keith Bradsher e Jad Mouawad
<109188809"> Le compagnie petrolifere cinesi seguono una strategia di lungo termine, per assicurarsi il rifornimento energetico, quelle occidentali operano per investimenti redditizi a breve.
<109188810"> Con l’offerta di $18,5md per la californiana Unocal, Cnooc, terza maggiore società petrolifera cinese, tenta il maggior colpo finora realizzato da una compagnia cinese dell’energia.
L’offerta di Cnooc ha suscitato sospetti e ostilità nel Congresso americano.
Il tentativo di Cnooc di due anni fa’ acquisire una forte quota di riserve petrolifere in Kazakistan fallì, perché le società occidentali operanti in quel campo petrolifero imposero il loro diritto legale a quella quota.
Le tre maggiori compagnie petrolifere cinesi, PetroChina (la sussidiaria sul mercato pubblico di Cnpc ), China Petroleum and Chemical, conosciuta anche come Sinopec, e Cnooc stanno cercando di rafforzarsi; sono presenti in 44 paesi, compresi Stati canaglia come il Sudan e Myanmar. Nell’ultimo decennio hanno complessivamente investito nei campi petroliferi e di gas al di fuori della Cina $15md. (James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at
Come già fecero Francia, Italia e Gran Bretagna, anche la Cina sta cercando di creare gruppi nazionali in grado di assicurarsi l’accesso alle risorse energetiche del globo. Oggi, le loro riserve estere complessive sono solo 1/10 di quelle di una sola grande multinazionale come Bp .
Cnooc ha il 93% delle sue riserve in Cina, all’opposto di Bp che ha il 93% delle sue riserve al di fuori della Gran Bretagna.
PetroChina, la maggiore compagnia petrolifera cinese, avrà ancora il 95% delle sue riserve in Cina anche dopo che il consolidamento di un ampio spettro di holding estere sarà stato trasferito dalla casa madre, China National Petroleum Corporation, o C.N.P.C.
Sinopec, che è soprattutto una società di raffinazione, ha solo ora iniziato ad acquisire all’estero. Cnpc e Sinopec hanno acquisito però diritti di prospezione in Mauritania, Angola, Azerbaidjan e Kazakistan. Le riserve estere potrebbero perciò aumentare fortemente nei prossimi anni se le società riusciranno a estrarre petrolio.
Si stima (PIRA Energy Group, NY) che le tre maggiori compagnie cinesi controllino ora la produzione di 300 000-400 000 b/g, fuori dalla Cina, pari al 10% della produzione domestica.
Unocal aggiungerebbe una produzione di 170 000 b/g di petrolio e l’equivalente di 260 000 b/g di gas.
Le maggiori tre compagnie petrolifere americane producono all’estero il 70% della loro produzione totale.
Tuttavia continuano a crescere i lavoratori cinesi del settore petrolifero in M.O., Africa e Sud America; i cinesi stanno negoziando contratti a lungo termine in Libia, Iran e Arabia Saudita.
Cnpc ha avuto un ruolo determinante nello sviluppo delle risorse petrolifere del Sudan; in Venezuela ha vinto accordi operativi in concorrenza con giganti come Bp e Shell; in Algeria Sinopec ha ottenuto diritti di prospezione e di trivellazione per cercare nuovi pozzi petroliferi.
Fino a una dozzina di anni fa’ la Cina era esportatrice netta di petrolio grezzo, ora ha sorpassato il Giappone come secondo maggiore consumatore del mondo.
La sua produzione domestica ammonta a 3,5mn b/g, poco più della metà del suo fabbisogno quotidiano di 6,7mn. b/g.
Nel 2004 la domanda è cresciuta del 16%; si prevede che in 20 anni la Cina consumerà quasi 13mn. di b/g – pari al 10% del totale mondiale di allora – e ne dovrà importare oltre 9mn. di b/g.
I cinesi sguono una prospettiva di lungo termine per assicurarsi le risorse strategiche, anziché una prospettiva d’investimento a breve (Christopher H. Stephens, della Coudert Brothers, specializzata in fusioni e acquisizioni in Cina).
Secondo le banche di investimento PetroChina sarebbe particolarmente interessata a PetroKazakhstan, la compagnia canadese con importanti campi petroliferi in Kazakistan. NYT 05-07-09
China Oil Giants Crave Respectability and Power
By KEITH BRADSHER and JAD MOUAWAD
HONG KONG, July 8 – Two years ago, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and another Chinese state-controlled oil company seemed on the verge of capturing a large patch of foreign oil reserves with a handshake deal to pay $1.23 billion for part of a field in Kazakhstan .
But the prospect was snatched away two months later when the Western companies operating the oil field asserted their legal right to buy the stake instead. For the Chinese oil executives, it was a rude defeat that emphasized their marginal status on the global energy map.
Indeed, for all their efforts over the last dozen years, Chinese companies have remarkably little to show for it – just a string of largely second-rate, remote, dubious or uncertain energy investments for which they have mostly overpaid.
Cnooc’s leaders are determined not to be upstaged again. And with their $18.5 billion bid for the American oil company Unocal last month, Cnooc is wagering significantly more in one stroke than Chinese energy concerns have spent so far globally.
Turning from the steppes of
Cnooc’s surprise offer comes at a time of concern in
But viewed from China, Cnooc’s thrust at Unocal only underlines the extent to which China’s top three oil companies – PetroChina; China Petroleum and Chemical, also known as Sinopec; and Cnooc – are earnestly seeking to expand their reach.
Their eclectic collection spans 44 countries, including pariah states like
“They’re not picking up the best stuff – they’re picking up stuff in the middle and, in some cases, the dregs,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, the director of the Center for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee in Scotland.Total commitments by the three companies have reached only $15 billion over the last decade to build equity stakes in oil and gas fields outside China, according to the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
The Chinese oil gia
nts are belatedly following a well-trodden path – one that
Cnooc, with 93 percent of its reserves in China, is the exact opposite in globalization from BP, with 93 percent of its proven reserves outside of Britain . PetroChina, the giant of China’s oil industry, will still have 95 percent of its reserves in China even after the consolidation of a wide range of overseas holdings being transferred by its parent, the China National Petroleum Corporation, or C.N.P.C.
Sinopec, mainly a refiner, has barely begun to acquire overseas assets. But C.N.P.C. and Sinopec have been active in acquiring exploration rights from
The PIRA Energy Group, a New York-based oil consultancy, estimates that
By comparison, crude production outside the United States for the three largest American oil companies amounts to 70 percent of their total output.
Still, Chinese oil workers are becoming a growing presence in the Middle East, Africa and South America, and their executives can now be spotted roving through remote outposts in
C.N.P.C. has been crucial in developing the oil resources of Sudan , a country that Western oil companies have been forced to leave because of pressure over its poor human-rights record; in Algeria, Sinopec has won exploration and drilling rights to look for new sources of oil; in Venezuela, C.N.P.C. won operating agreements in bidding rounds that included oil giants like BP or Shell.
China ‘s future energy appetite is expected to be enormous. The country, a net exporter of crude oil only a dozen years ago, recently surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest oil consumer. Its domestic production amounts to 3.5 million barrels a day, slightly over half the country’s daily needs of 6.7 million barrels.
Last year, oil demand in China grew by 16 percent. In 20 years, China is expected to consume nearly 13 million barrels a day, or 10 percent of what experts hope will be the world’s total at the time – with imports exceeding nine million barrels. And if production fails to expand fast enough, China could put even more pressure on global oil supplies.
Since the mid-1990’s, the Chinese authorities have mandated that their oil companies expand abroad.
Many China experts say that the country is so eager for overseas reserves that it will inevitably be willing to pay top dollar. Also, Chinese companies have been more willing to assume that oil prices will stay high. Most Western companies base their planning for oil projects on the idea that they should be profitable when oil is roughly $25 a barrel.
“The Chinese take a long-term perspective to securing strategic resources rather than a short-term investment perspective, ” said Christopher H. Stephens, a senior partner at Coudert Brothers specializing in mergers and acquisitions in China who is not involved in the fight for control of Unocal. “They don’t face those pressures to show investment returns on a quarterly basis.”
Other experts are more blunt. “The Chinese are blindly going ahead with what commercial sense would not advise, blindly buying up investments in rogue states,” said Brahma Chellaney, a strategic studies professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
Fu Chengyu, Cnooc’s chief executive, denied that Cnooc had been engaged in a scattershot effort to buy into any oil fields that came on the market. But he also defined the company’s strategy in broad terms that did not exclude such an approach.
Cnooc, the smallest of the three Chinese oil companies, is not the only one with global ambitions. Wang Guoliang, the chief financial officer of PetroChina, the publicly traded subsidiary of C.N.P.C., signaled his company’s ambitions at a news conference on June 10. He said it “will eventually grow from a mainly domestic oil and gas company to an international corporation with significant international oil and gas assets.”
PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian company with substantial oil fields in Kazakhstan, one of China’s western neighbors, announced last week that it had received “approaches from a number of different parties regarding a potential corporate transaction involving either an acquisition or a merger with the company.” Investment bankers said that PetroChina had been especially interested in PetroKazakhstan.
Whether Cnooc’s bid for Unocal includes a geopolitical premium of some sort is particularly hard to pin down because the company owns a mixture of oil and gas assets covered by a range of contracts requiring deliveries at various prices for years to come. Based on Cnooc’s experience in
By buying a company outright, rather than stakes in existing oil fields, Cnooc avoids the risk of another government or company exercising the sort of pre-emption right on stakes that Cnooc and Sinopec lost out to in Kazakhstan two years ago.
With their willingness to make optimistic assumptions about oil prices and their ability to borrow heavily from the government, Chinese companies are likely to keep on making acquisitions regardless of what happens with Unocal.
“We evaluate things now on $24 oil,” complained William Gammell, the chief executive of Cairn Energy of Scotland, “but you can’t make transactions on that any more.”
Keith Bradsher reported from Hong Kong for this article and Jad Mouawad from
Copyright 2005 The New York Times