New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | August 1, 2005

Melanie Colburn contemplates greenlighting the sale of black gold to red China.

Comments

|8.1.05 @ 6:00PM|#

So CNOOC was "promising" they'd keep the oil inside the USA? How reassuring. And with the possibility of the Middle East imploding at any moment, and dwindling supplies elsewhere, it's almost comical that we'd trust a government-backed (however indirectly) oil concern of a country we're almost certainly going to have to battle for oil in the future, to buy an American oil company. Said government whose slaughter of innocent protesters is fast fading into memory, and who grants its citizens little freedom but keeps them under control by promising more economic miracles. Strange times indeed.

|8.1.05 @ 6:28PM|#

I'll take the protectionist capitalists any day.

Seriously, what did China think we would do?

|8.1.05 @ 7:08PM|#

I wonder where Ron Paul is on this issue, I remember him shitting a non-libertarian brick when the Panama Canal was bought by a similar Chinese company...

|8.2.05 @ 5:55AM|#

statistics on international oil resources can be unnerving. Production is already peaking or declining in most non-OPEC countries. Exxon expects production to peak in the next five years, even recommending that the U.S. being increasing conservation of its oil supplies. And the Department of Energy's 2004 analysis states that the U.S. is using oil three times faster than it can establish new sources

Yet despite these facts, Peak Oil is something only a paranoid nut could believe in.

|8.2.05 @ 6:56AM|#

Why is everyone so afraid of a Chinese company owning an American oil producer?

Let them buy it. If we ever have any concerns about how they operate it, we can always seize it under eminent domain.

ed|8.2.05 @ 9:38AM|#

Is China still red?
Aren't they sorta pinkish now?

|8.2.05 @ 11:22AM|#

The point is officially moot.

|8.2.05 @ 11:34AM|#

The Republicans in power don't want their bestest buddies in the oil industry looking for other places to make their campaign contributions. Protectionism is truly as bipartisan as cronyism.

|8.2.05 @ 11:51AM|#

Yet it's just jim-dandy if a group of Russian kleptocrats wants to buy up Getty and make it Lukoil? Does that work because they're selling Russian oil into the US? They also get to control whatever resource pipeline Getty had beforehand.

The article was very well written - I note the author of the piece is an intern. Nick, I cordially encourage you make a permanent offer to Ms Colburn before the end of the summer! Keep her on board!

|8.2.05 @ 1:49PM|#

Aren't they sorta pinkish now?

China allows some capitalism, in order to keep the people happy, while remaining just as totalitarian as ever. I wouldn't care less about this deal (yes, I know it's moot, but just sayin') IF the government could be trusted when it says it has no stake in the oil company. And the Chinese government's word is no good, to put it mildly.

|8.2.05 @ 4:53PM|#

"Its parent firm has never been subsidized by the PRC."

What the hell?

CNOOC Ltd.'s parent firm was created by China's State Council in 1982, is 70% state owned, has exclusive rights to all off shore oil drilling activities in CHina, and (through ownership of CNOOC Ltd.) has exclusive rights to offshore oil deals with foreign companies and other countries. Don't think that that bank loan from a state-run bank was hard to get either.

Does providing a company with a monopoly over a huge lucrative piece of the energy market count as subsidizing it? Maybe not technically, but as far as I am concerned, it might as well be.

The real issue isnt about employment or securing energy sources, its about whether or not we are going to let the Chinese government trick us into believing its state run companies compete fairly in relatively free market economies like our own. I'd say let CNOOC have Unocal, if I thought China would free up its own state-run sectors, but that will be a cold day in hell.