CNOOC Ltd.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
CNOOC Ltd. (中国海洋石油总公司) is an oil and gas company, the third-largest oil company in the People's Republic of China. It explores and develops crude oil and natural gas offshore of China. Its shares trade in Hong Kong and New York. It has a sister company China Oilfield Services(COSL)
CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) is 70% owned by the Government of the People's Republic of China.
The chairman and chief executive is Fu Chengyu (傅成玉). Members of the board include Evert Henkes, formerly of Shell, and Kenneth Courtis of Goldman Sachs.
Originally, CNOOC was an acronym for China National Offshore Oil Corp.
In June 2005, CNOOC made an all-cash $18.5 billion offer to buy American oil company Unocal Corporation, topping an earlier bid by ChevronTexaco. Unocal's extensive oil interests in Central Asia are considered to be an excellent strategic fit for CNOOC. On July 20, 2005 Unocal announced that it has accepted an increased buyout offer from ChevronTexaco for $17.1 billion. This decision will be submitted to a vote by Unocal stockholders on August 10, 2005. On August 2, however, CNOOC announced that it had withdrawn its bid for Unocal, citing political tension inside the United States.
Failed Takeover of Unocal
Despite a hands-off approach from the Bush Administration, a broad group of Democrats and Republicans in Congress used a variety of arguments to help ensure that the CNOOC bid failed. They argued that with $13 billion of CNOOC's bid for Unocal coming from the Chinese government, the offer did not represent a free market transaction. Further, they argued that American corporations were prohibited from purchasing analogous assets in Communist China. It was also argued (despite being largely debunked by The Economist and other sources, that the foreign (and particularly communist) ownership of oil assests could represent a national security risk. While there was no direct legal route to block the purchase, Congressional delays and calls for extensive research into the matter created significant additional risk around the CNOOC bid.
