Word: crude
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...windowsill of his Beijing office, affixed with labels such as "Saudi sweet." As senior vice president of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), Yang is responsible for the state-owned company's efforts to secure oil and gas supplies all over the globe. The samples of crude are souvenirs that testify how far he must roam in his search. "I'd like it if there was oil under Paris," he says, "but I spend my time in less comfortable places...
...course, there are numerous other factors driving the price of crude, among them supply hiccups caused by chaos in Iraq, political and economic turmoil in oil-producing nations such as Nigeria and Russia, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and fears of terrorism. "It is neither fair nor accurate to blame China for most of the rise in oil prices," says Jeffrey Logan of the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). But with oil in short supply?currently, producers are pumping just 1 million barrels more than the 81 million barrels being consumed worldwide every day?growing demand from China...
...China wasn't always so heavily dependent upon imported oil. The discovery in 1959 of the Daqing oil fields under the Manchurian grasslands meant the once largely agrarian country was for decades able to produce more crude than it required, a happy circumstance that the government celebrated as a political victory. "Study Daqing!" chanted legions of Red Guards during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when the country's best-known "model worker" was Wang Jinxi, who was said to have plunged into a vat of Daqing oil during a freezing winter and stirred it with his body so it would...
...Leaders in Beijing want to avoid the fate of other oil-poor countries like South Korea, which buys all of its crude on the open market and is therefore exposed to sharp price rises. The way to do that is to invest in exploration and development in countries that have oil fields but lack the capital or technology to exploit them. Once Chinese companies have a stake in oil coming out of the ground, even if it originates abroad, they'll have secured long-term supplies independent of the world's fickle prices. The process of overseas exploration began...
...more direct link between oil fields in Russia and refineries in Daqing. The flow could supply as much as 15% of China's imports. During a visit to Moscow last month, Premier Wen Jiabao repeated China's entreaties but received no promises. In fact, Russia's only crude-oil supplier to China, the embattled Yukos, announced only days before Wen's arrival that it would cut off shipments to China. The move seemed designed to embarrass the Kremlin, but it underscored China's vulnerability. Meanwhile, Beijing's planned pipeline is in danger of being thwarted by its regional nemesis, Japan...