China looking for energy supplies at home

BEIJING: After a scramble by China’s big oil companies to secure energy reserves overseas, they seem to have found their best prospects in the most unexpected place: under their own feet.

China is turning inward for energy resources to feed its economy as it faces increasingly nationalist governments from Venezuela to Russia that want bigger oil profits and competition for remote deep-water fields or unconventional resources, like Canada’s oil sands.


Until oil prices fall, nationalism evaporates or an opportunity to buy a major company emerges, China will largely avoid major investments, industry insiders say.

“The Chinese won’t be like hungry wolves, as some in the West are expecting,” said Zeng Xingqiu, an industry veteran who recently retired as vice president at the overseas investment arm of the oil trader Sinochem.

IHT