Aussie gas assets on China's wish list Christian Schmollinger...

Aussie gas assets on China's wish list

Christian Schmollinger
From: Bloomberg
April 16, 2011 12:00AM

CHINA'S national oil companies are likely to take aim at Australian natural gas assets this year by buying stakes in projects, consultant Wood Mackenzie says.

Chinese companies may buy stakes to access about 49.4 million tonnes a year of unsold gas supply from projects in Australia, the specialist energy consultancy group said in a report yesterday.

PetroChina Company, China's biggest energy group, has about $38 billion in cash to fund acquisitions this year, Simon Flowers, an analyst with Edinburgh-based Wood Mackenzie says.

"The principal opportunity for these national oil companies will be Australia," Mr Flowers said.

China's energy companies, including Cnooc Limited, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation and PetroChina, spent $42.7 billion on 60 agreements last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

China Petroleum, or Sinopec, made the biggest acquisitions, spending $11.7 billion.

"Sinopec and Cnooc have been very active in North America," Mr Flowers said.

Chinese buyers were unlikely to buy whole Australian companies with big natural gas reserves (such as Woodside Petroleum or Santos) to avoided any political conflicts, he said, adding:"What these companies want is long-term reserves." he said.
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Question: Its not STO and not Woodside. How likely is it that China will team with Japanese Companies? (Chinese people will take 200 years before they forget the shame of Japanese occupation). So a Chinese off-take and a shareholding, and finance package and a Japanese mini plant at Newcastle? Not very likely. Who else could be on China's radar..or does it mean a change at Newcastle?

Meanwhile, what the hell are BHP doing letting their home country's assets getting bought out from under them by Chinese and just giving cash back to shareholders -dumbest decision I ever read. The ponderous BHP may have fumbled the ball. Going to get interesting at some stage.