(Chinese govt. company) CNOOC tests U.S. with $1.1 billion Chesapeake bid

[Poll_Blind]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - China's top offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd (0883.HK) agreed to pay $1.1 billion for a stake in a U.S. shale oil and gas field, testing the market for the first time since its 2005 failed bid for Unocal.

CNOOC shares hit a three-year high on news of the deal with Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N), which could be the start of more outbound acquisitions as the Chinese company races to meet its aggressive production growth forecasts to feed the country's fast-growing economy, analysts and bankers said.

"We expect them to expand their footprint in the Canadian oil-sands and also in Brazil's deepwater. That's the last frontier where you can extract big oil volumes," said Gordon Kwan, head of Asian energy research for Mirae Asset Securities, adding that Nigeria and Angola could also be attractive.

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The 10 deals so far this year for China's oil and gas companies have been worth $18.6 billion, already eclipsing the $15.8 billion in deals for all of 2009, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Most of the outbound acquisitions by China's oil firms have been in risky areas such as Africa, which Western rivals have avoided, or in locations with aging assets.

Now they are also eyeing the United States, which was once deemed off limits to the Chinese due to protectionist sentiment.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69A0T520101011

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Much more at the link and well-worth reading.

A world of declining and financially-crippled nations look for quick cash, selling off assets for short-term monetary gain but with a long-term outlook as deadly as eating the seed corn. Of course, even an uneducated population understands the merits of keeping natural resources close. Legislators and representatives, however, can be bought by...other interests...and the resources wind up on the market to the highest bidder. This was typically a malady of the third world and so, perhaps, the villainy of it was underplayed.

But we are now inching closer and closer to an environment in which our capitalist society has been beaten by the megalithic slave-state of China. And all they had to do was keep feeding us the endless supplies of money our particular perversion of capitalism loved so much.

Should that dealer/junkie relationship continue unabated, would it be so surprising to find ourselves owned outright, through a contract drawn up by us, to the Chinese?

Is that capitalism? Belay that question. Is that a future to be snarled around the necks of our children?

PB

[Javaman]

1. How do you say, "drill, baby drill" in chinese? nt