China Reviewing Oil Relationships with Sudan, South Sudan

The Chinese government and China National Petroleum Corp. are reviewing their relationships with Sudan and South Sudan following years of growth that changed both sides, a researcher said at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies.

“Sudan was a launching pad for CNPC to become a global corporation through financial and resource benefits,” said Luke Patey, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and author of “The New Kings of Crude: China, Oil, and Civil War in Sudan and South Sudan.”

“For much of the 2000s, CNPC took 40% of its oil from Sudan through subsidiaries as well as through the main subsidiary,” Patey said during an Oct. 20 event hosted by the SAIS China-Africa Research Initiative. “Things started to go bad for CNPC when the two Sudans signed a comprehensive peace agreement. There now was less, not more, security where local groups targeted Chinese workers.”

“In Canada, CNPC was looking to buy an oil sands project when its head of operations disappeared in China,” Patey said. “It’s reached a point where if a company official is known not to have reported to someone in the government for a couple of days, it’s assumed he’s been taken out of circulation.”

But CNPC also was blamed for producing revenue for Sudan’s government to pursue aggression in the 1990s, according to Patey. It’s trying to show that it has cleaned up its act by engaging local interests there and Western nongovernment organizations, he said. “So far, its record has been pretty thin on the ground. Guiding principles have been introduced, but NGOs need to push CNPC forward harder,” Patey said.

（ogj.com Edited by Topco)