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Oil giants speed up overseas expansion

By Zhao Tingting (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-07-08 16:31

China's five leading oil companies have all accelerated the pace of their overseas development in the first half of this year due to sliding prices and rising domestic oil demand, said a Shanghai Securities News report today.

China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China's largest jet-fuel producer and distributor, China National Aviation Fuel Group, recently announced it intended to buy a refinery in South Korea to expand operations besides aviation oil trade and supply, said the report, citing the company's CEO, Meng Fanqiu.

Although there were slim margins and rare investment opportunities in the refinery sector, some refinery plants in South Korea were still attractive and may be acquired at reasonable prices, Meng said.

Last week, the news that China's largest oil company, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), and China's top offshore oil and gas producer, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), made a bid for Spanish oil major Repsol's Argentine unit YPF aroused the world's attention.

If the acquisition is approved, it will make a record in China's crude assets trade history with an estimated investment of $22.6 billion.

CNPC, teamed with Britain BP PLC, won a contract on June 30 to develop the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq, which boasts the third-largest oil reserves in the world. It also planned to bid for the auction of two oil blocks in Venezuela together with France's Total.

In addition, CNPC's listed arm PetroChina completed the purchase of a 45.51 percent stake in Singapore Petroleum Co with $1.02 billion on June 21.

CNPC's smaller rival Sinopec Group said on June 25 it agreed to acquire the Geneva-based oil and gas producer Addax Petroleum Corp for $7.3 billion.

State oil trader Sinochem and CNOOC also led a consortium to enter a bid for Maysan oilfield complex in Iraq, but failed eventually in June.

"These acquisitions imply that some foreign resource enterprises were caught with liquidity difficulties caused by the global financial crisis," said Zhou Fengqi, former director of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission yesterday.

Related readings:  China's oil majors mull bids for Iraq oil  Iraqi crude deal 'boost' for China's oil security quest  Spanish Repsol unit may sell stake to China's CNPC  Sinopec to buy Addax for $7.3b

Zhou's views echo those of Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University. "The timing is now good for domestic oil companies to make overseas deals as they can buy assets cheaper."

"But Chinese oil companies should select quality assets prudently," Zhou added.

Meng said China Aviation Oil is extremely prudent about overseas acquisitions as it follows a set of strict evaluation procedures.

Ping An Insurance, China's second-largest life insurer, incurred a 22.8 billion-yuan ($3.34 billion) investment loss in Fortis, a Belgian-Dutch bank last year, being an expensive lesson to Chinese companies which are still inexperienced in foreign acquisitions.

Chinese enterprises' overseas acquisitions had amounted to 67 cases this year as of the end of June, involving an asset value of $26.7 billion, up 26.3 percent year-on-year, the report said, quoting Thomson Reuters figures.

China, the second largest energy consumer in the world, relies on imported oil for nearly half of its requirements. The country's oil consumption grew around 5 percent annually in recent years.

Customs data showed that China's net crude-oil imports rose to 16.62 million tons in May, a 14-month high, as demand gained before the peak summer period.

In order to meet the country's mounting oil demand for rapid economic growth, Chinese oil giants are deploying their strategic overseas expansions by grasping the chance of cash hungry overseas oil firms and lower crude prices.

Crude oil prices have fallen to around $60 a barrel these days, after rocketing to a record above $147 in July last year.