India, China: Comrades in Oil--Atimes Online

[Gloria]

From the new World Media Watch up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


4//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Aug 19, 2005

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GH19Df04.html



INDIA, CHINA: COMRADES IN OIL

By Jyoti Malhotra

NEW DELHI - Having gingerly circled around each other like two cautious pugilists for the past decades, India and China may be taking their first step in the creation of an Asian synergy that has much more to do with making real money than the rhetorical bombast of anti-imperialist morality.

Last week in Beijing, within days of China announcing that it would vote against a resolution led by India and Japan to expand the UN Security Council, vice chairman Zhang Xiaoqiang of China's National Development and Reform Commission was feting Talmiz Ahmad, an Indian diplomat seconded to the Oil and Petroleum Ministry in New Delhi with the task of creating energy partnerships abroad.


As Ahmad and his delegation were shown around Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai, a senior Chinese oil executive told him, "The possibilities of India and China cooperating in Central Asia, Russia and Africa are enormous of course, but both of us must also work together in America and the big nations of Europe."

The senior Chinese oil executive's message was clear: American oil major Unocal's recent rejection of China National Offshore Oil Cooperation (CNOOC)'s nearly US$18 billion offer to take over the US oil company had been grounded as much in American realpolitik as in the number-crunching offered by Unocal. India, on the other hand, growing at 8% per annum and hungry to elbow its way into the world's top 10, could definitely bring something to the table.

SNIP

Ahmad and his delegation were given such a right royal tour of the three Chinese cities that they were thrilled. Just as the Chinese side had carefully prepared for the Indian team, the Indian delegation had brought with them power-point presentations comparing Indian and Chinese oil strategies - the latter in answer to questions posed by the Chinese delegation to the round table of Asian oil ministers in New Delhi in January.

"The visit far, far exceeded my expectations," Ahmad said, pointing out that India's Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar would visit China in November to formalize principles and understandings between both nations in the energy sector.

[cthrumatrix]

1. bush the "uniter".... comes thru again

[SpiralHawk]

2. Brilliant Strategery, ChimPee This will help the USA Big Time. Not.

Hope you're enjoying your taxpayer-funded vacation at the Imperial Pig Farm Upon Crawford. Because the average American is getting screwed blue and tatooed right now because of your dumb and amoral Quest for Imperial Power, and your shitty sense of what is really going on in the world.

You are being outmanuervered every which way from Sunday on the global chess board, and you are meanwhile fiddling while the Greenhouse Effect wreaks increasing havoc.

Do the noble thing: go AWOL again and let American go back to being free and wise and noble and all that stuff you are incapable of grokking.

[wli]

3. BRIC revival?

Well, BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) was a military alliance, not sure what happened to it, though.