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 Re: A letter from the world's Nobel laureates to China: You must act on Darfur (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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China’s Need to Acquire Foreign Oil Reserves
China invested in Sudan’s nascent oil industry because of its need to acquire foreign oil reserves. While China expected its industrial development to make increasing demands for more oil, the Chinese oilfields had, by the late 1990s, already passed their peak production. “China until recently relied on its vast northeastern Daqing oilfield to fuel its energy needs, but output is declining and it has yet to find new large domestic supplies,” according to the Chinese government news agency Xinhua
In the early 1990s, the Chinese government projected that it could have a shortfall of about 50 million tons of crude oil (30 percent of its oil needs) in 2000, while domestic crude output remained static at 160 million tons. China therefore had to rely on its ability to stake out oil reserves abroad. Oil analysts projected that China would become an oil importer—at the mercy of non-Chinese oil producing states and companies—within five years. China set about becoming a global player in the oil industry. Chinese officials wanted “to have a 10-million-ton-oil supply from overseas a year by 2000 and 50 million tons of oil and 50 billion cubic meters of gas by 2010
By 1997, according to CNPC’s then president, Zhou Yongkang, China was “very aggressive in buying foreign oil and gas fields.”1393 The CNPC brought its first shipment of foreign crude oil to China in 1997
CNPC, a government-owned corporation, acting through a wholly-owned subsidiary, took the largest share, 40 percent, in the GNPOC consortium on December 6, 1996, when Arakis sold 75 percent of its interest in the project to three other companies to form that consortium. The Sudanese project was expected to produce up to ten million tons of oil a year for China by 2000, which would by itself help meet China’s projected oil import target for 2000
In 1998, CNPC’s construction arm, China Petroleum Engineering & Construction (Group) Corporation (CPECC), participated in the construction of the 1,500-kilometer-long GNPOC pipeline from Blocks 1 and 2 to the Red Sea. It also built a refinery near Khartoum with a 2.5 million-ton processing capacity. It further engaged in “10 million tons oilfield surface engineering.” The Sudan project became “the first overseas large oilfield operated by China,” according to the Chinese
The Chinese government-run news agency was effusive about China’s participation in the Sudan project, characterizing it as CNPC’s biggest overseas project to date.1398 The agency termed the oilfield, the long oil pipeline, and the oil refinery China built in Sudan “a major breakthrough in China’s overseas oil work. The news agency likewise claimed, “China has made a series of technological breakthroughs in undertaking the huge [Sudan] oil project, including in the sectors of oil engineering technology, geological prospecting and oil drilling
Yet, China claimed it did not make any profit on the pipeline, refinery, and two oil well projects in Sudan. The vice president of CPECC said, “A Western company couldn’t have done what we did . . . Sudan wanted it done in 18 months and we did it, even though we knew we wouldn’t make any money
China admitted that it brought in a team of 10,000 Chinese laborers so the GNPOC project could be completed by the NIF’s tenth anniversary (June 30, 1999). Its labor costs were low: Our workers are used to eating bitterness . . . they can work 13 to 14 hours a day for very little. Similarly, the Chinese subcontractor (also a Chinese government enterprise) brought in two Chinese crews for the seismic phase of the Lundin operation in Block 5A. They were new, straight from Beijing. Some did not know how to drive a vehicle
It was widely rumored in the oil business in Sudan that the Chinese planned to bring in prisoners to build the pipelines, which was allegedly how they underbid others to get the pipeline contract. Still, it is difficult to see how Chinese laborers brought to Sudan could live and work for less than southern Sudanese laborers, even Chinese prisoners, because of the transportation cost—even if the transport was one-way for many who may have perished from disease in the inhospitable swamps and baked savannahs. China also admitted that the Sudanese army had to protect the Chinese workers from rebel attacks
The Chinese companies’ failure to hire local staff led to copious complaints from southerners. In Block 5A, Lundin and its Chinese subcontractor had a crew of sixty people in the “highland” location (Ryer/Thar Jath), forty-five of whom were (northern) Sudanese, the rest Chinese. On the “swamp crew” of sixty (on the White Nile), thirty to forty were Sudanese, the rest Chinese. The Chinese spoke no English and translations were done by the Chinese party chief, who spoke rudimentary English
The Chinese subcontractor had recruited in the north and hired northern Sudanese to work on this Block 5A project, though they did not have any technical expertise and had to be trained on the job. The Rappaport security consultant to Lundin advised Lundin and the Chinese that it was not a good idea to take northerners to the south to work. Everyone from the Bentiu area, from the governor to the local hires, complained that there were not enough locals on the job, he reported. The Chinese subcontractor insisted on bringing in these northern workers, however. After some incidents, the security company put its foot down on hiring northern Sudanese, and the Chinese subcontractor relented
The Chinese companies involved in GNPOC did all this work, their spokesman said, for no profit—for valuable experience overseas—which, as China omitted to mention, was gained mostly under Talisman as project manager. The Wall Street Journal nevertheless reported in 1999 that the Sudan project accounted for U.S. $ 500 million of a record $ 710 million in revenues (unaudited) for China Petroleum Engineering & Construction (Group) Corporation
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Mohamed Omer
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست