15-12-05 With a booming economy to match its global ambitions, China is elbowing its way in to join the scramble for Africa's untapped oil riches.
On the same continent where Cold War enemies the United States and the Soviet Union once sparred through proxy regimes and armies, Chinese oil executives now jostle with western counterparts to win exploration, output and supply contracts. From the rock-strewn deserts of Sudan and Mauritania to the deep waters off Angola and Nigeria, Chinese energy companies are aggressively hunting for new oil reserves to power the world's fastest growing major economy.

China had already blazed a diplomatic trail across Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, offering its support to newly independent states and throwing its weight behind liberation movements and the fight against apartheid. Today, with its expanding economy becoming ever more thirsty for oil and raw materials, Beijing is working to turn that history of diplomatic goodwill into concrete energy and investment deals.
"China has had an engagement with Africa for years, originally driven by diplomacy, but now there are real commercial imperatives... the concern is to secure long-term oil," said Antony Goldman, Africa analyst at London-based Clearwater Research Services.

US experts say China now receives 28 % of its oil imports from Africa, mostly from Angola, Sudan and Congo. Chinese companies are charging into Africa's oil sector, snapping up partnerships in Nigerian and Angolan offshore blocks, building facilities and pipelines in Sudan and prospecting in Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
"They're everywhere, they're really going for it," said Catriona O'Rourke, Africa analyst for Wood Mackenzie.

This newest scramble for Africa's oil resources more than a century after the continent's colonial carve-up puts China in direct competition with the United States, the world's single biggest energy consumer. The United States already gets around 15 % of its oil imports from the Gulf of Guinea, which groups sub-Saharan Africa's major producers like Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
Analysts predict this share could rise to 25 % by 2015 as Washington looks for alternate diversified supplies outside the volatile Middle East and currently hostile Venezuela.

US experts warn this contest for African oil supplies by the world's No. 1 and No. 2 petroleum guzzlers could become an open conflict of interests between Beijing and Washington.
China, they say, is far less choosy about its partners and offers aid, trade and investment unencumbered by demands for transparency, good governance and accountability.

"As China is not a beacon of any of these, the Chinese government's practices in Africa can be expected to undermine US goals," Carolyn Bartholomew of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a July 28 report.
The Commission, which reports to the US Congress, says that while the United States and other Western countries try to use the leverage of assistance or investment to encourage reform in African countries, "the Chinese government is prepared to fill the investment hole without constraints."

Analysts point to the cases of Sudan and Angola, both pillars of Chinese energy investment in Africa. In Sudan, which is under international scrutiny for what Washington calls "genocide" in Darfur, Chinese state firms have taken a major stake in the oil sector, building a refinery in Khartoum and heavily involving themselves in production.
In Angola too, where some international lenders have balked at putting up funds, China has weighed in with a $ 2 bn infrastructure loan program linked to oil deals in what Chinese diplomats call "a model of cooperation."
"I think they come with more offerings," said Wood Mackenzie's O'Rourke, saying the Chinese were able to sweeten their investment bids with state aid and cooperation projects, such as rebuilding Angola's war-ravaged railway network.

China's Sinopec has been allowed to buy into two Angola blocks previously held by European oil majors. Although US giants like Chevron and ExxonMobil have huge investments in Angola, where their deep-water expertise is still much needed, China has now displaced the United States as the country's biggest oil customer.
"It's much more difficult for ExxonMobil to say 'we'll build you a railway'," said Clearwater's Goldman.

In Nigeria, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is in talks over a possible deal to take over a refinery and get preferential terms in return on some oil exploration blocks.
In Equatorial Guinea too, western companies' dominance over the oil sector may not last forever. The country's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, offered China investment opportunities during a visit to Beijing in October.