U.S. firms fear revenge after China’s lost oil bid

When China National Offshore Oil Corp., the Chinese-government-owned oil company, dropped its bid to buy Unocal earlier this month, it said that political opposition in Washington had scuttled the plan. The question that U.S. oil companies now face is whether they might someday suffer similar political retribution in their own dealings with foreign governments.

“It’s a tremendous precedent-setter for a government to interfere and declare that national security is at stake,” said Daniel Yergin, the president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an oil consultancy. “What is this going to mean for American oil companies from Algeria to Zanzibar?”

International Herald Tribune