China warns ExxonMobil to drop Vietnam deal: report

Ecuador looks to Iran and China in new oil refinery
China and Iran are interested in investing in a six-billion-dollar oil refinery Ecuador is building with Venezuelan help on the Pacific coast, President Rafael Correa said Saturday. "That refinery is being built with (Venezuela's state giant) PDVSA although Iran and China also are interested," the Ecuadoran leader said in his weekly television address. The megaplant on the coast, on which Correa and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez broke ground Wednesday, will be on line fully in 2013 and will be able to produce 300,000 barrels of oil per day. Correa said Iran could be involved and shrugged off any concern that might cause. "Iran has a lot of experience in ther oil field, it has been a producer for a long time, almost a century... and China is the leading oil consumer, so we will have a guaranteed market," said Correa, a leftist economist by training. "Somebody may say: Iran, Axis of Evil. But what do I care what other countries think? We have to be masters of our own destiny. We have nothing against Iran. Iran has done nothing to us," Correa said. Venezuela and Ecuador are the Latin American members of OPEC.

by Staff Writers
Hong Kong (AFP) July 20, 2008
China has warned US oil giant ExxonMobil to drop an exploration deal in the seas off Vietnam and said the project could threaten any future mainland contracts, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Sunday.

Diplomats in Washington have contacted senior figures in the world's largest oil firm to protest the deal, which they say could be a breach of Chinese sovereignty, the Sunday Morning Post reported citing unnamed sources close to the US firm.

"If it was simply a legal question it would be easy," one of the sources told the newspaper.

"Vietnam would probably prevail in international mediation. But it's political, too. China's concerns make the situation much more complicated for a company like Exxon... China is a very important player in the international oil industry."

The dispute involves a preliminary co-operation agreement between state oil firm PetroVietnam and ExxonMobil covering exploration in the South China Sea off Vietnam's south and central coasts, the report said.

The Chinese protests are based on Beijing's historical claim to huge swathes of the South China Sea, the report said.

Last year, China criticised a joint deal between Vietnam and British energy giant BP near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, saying the area has been an "indisputable part of Chinese territory since ancient times."

The report quoted Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung saying it needed to be "clearly asserted" that Hanoi's dealings with foreign oil partners fell entirely within Vietnam's legal rights and sovereignty.

China and Vietnam -- who in 1979 fought a short border war after Vietnam expelled the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge from Cambodia -- also fought a brief naval battle in 1988 near the Spratly Islands.

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Analysis: Iraq Energy Roundup

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 20, 2008
The Iraqi Oil Ministry signed a last-minute deal with Turkish officials following a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Baghdad. A Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi Parliament said he did not refer to oil contracts signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government as illegal documents. U.S. policy regarding oil deals made in Iraq while the government there lacks hydrocarbon legislation is ambiguous, said Sen. Carl Levin, D.-Mich. Bob Schaffer, Republican Senate candidate from Colorado, denied allegations he, with his former employer Aspect Energy, was negligent with Kurdish oil deals.

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