"China imports most of its oil from Sudan"
Totally incorrect (to be polite)
Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 By MATTHEW FORNEY
China's stepped-up oil diplomacy and its increasingly competitive stance in world oil markets are already creating friction with countries such as India, which like China has a bustling economy and a growing oil habit to satisfy. Earlier this year, ONGC Videsh, the overseas investment arm of India's largest oil-and-gas producer, was on the verge of completing a deal that would have given it an 11% stake in a proven oil field in Sudan. While the company waited for the necessary approval from India's Cabinet, CNPC swooped in with an offer that was reportedly 17% higher, and snatched the oil deal for China. "The Chinese are definitely very aggressive in the price they are willing to pay," says R.S. Butola, managing director of ONGC Videsh. Similarly, Vietnam's leaders recently complained to visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao about CNOOC's intent to conduct seismic testing near the Spratly Islands in partnership with the Philippine National Oil Co. The Spratlys, a mostly uninhabited archipelago in the South China Sea, are believed to harbor commercial deposits of oil and gas, but sovereignty over the islands has long been disputed by Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Undaunted by such diplomatic sensitivities, Beijing has demonstrated its willingness to focus first on protecting its energy interests. Last month, the United Nations discussed imposing sanctions on Sudan as a punishment for sponsoring human-rights abuses in Darfur. China has invested a reported $15 billion in Sudanese oil projects, and Sudan nowadays supplies about 7% of China's oil imports. China, which sits on the U.N. Security Council, threatened to veto the sanctions. The U.N. instead passed a watered-down measure.
(http://http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501041025-725174,00.html)
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SOURCE: WSJ
http://online.wsj.com/
Oct 17, 2007
When oil prices pushed past $80 a barrel last month for the first time, China's crude imports rose just 1.5%, the slowest pace in nearly a year.
What this means is refiners such as state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, have already started drawing on their inventories instead of stepping into the market while prices are high.
However, China's oil data are notoriously unreliable, with import numbers subject to wide swings from month to month.
The risk is that if prices don't cool in coming weeks, refiners will be forced to rebuild shrinking stockpiles at an even higher cost.
It isn't just in China, or neighboring Japan, where oil stocks are running unseasonably low: Inventories in the U.S. and Europe's Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam hub have also been draining away.
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