April 8, 2003	Tuesday	Safar 5, 1424

ALMATY: China’s bid to become a new player in the Great Game of pipeline politics in oil-rich Central Asia appears doomed, oilmen and analysts say.

Most of the partners in a multinational consortium of oil companies called Agip KCO are leaning toward exercising their right to preempt a Chinese offer to buy a sixth of their North Caspian Sea project, which includes the giant Kashagan field.

“Most companies will preempt,” said a senior executive in a member oil company requesting anonymity.

The last time a partner decided to sell a share in the project, two years ago, the others all increased their take in proportion.

The offer to buy two one-twelfth shares for $615 million each was announced on March 7 and 11 by two state-controlled Chinese oil companies, CNOOC Ltd., and Sinopec Group.

The other partners had 60 days to match the offer.

The British seller, BG group, was the odd man out in the largest oilfield development project in the world.

Primarily a gas company, it was smaller than most of the other six partners, which include ExxonMobil Corporation, Agip Spa, Royal Dutch/Shell and TotalFinaElf with one-sixth each.

Impex of Japan and Philips Petroleum share the remaining sixth.

Analysts had long predicted that BG would sell its share to concentrate on gas fields, and it has made a tidy profit considering it spent between $200 to $300 million so far, sources familiar with the company said.

China’s booming economy has turned it from an oil exporter in the 1980s to an importer, noted China oil expert Philip Andrews-Speed of Dundee University in Scotland.

“China is increasingly looking abroad for oil,” he said, and its dwindling reserves have led it to look west to Central Asia, a region dominated by Russia that in the 19th century faced a challenge from Britain, played out in what was termed the “Great Game”.

Buying a major share of the North Caspian project would help China provide the required commitments to build a pipeline to the western part of the country, which it seeks to develop, experts say.

Many believe the decision of the consortium members to preempt is at least partly due to their unusually high numbers, which sometimes makes decision-making a tortuous process, consortium executives have long complained.

“Reducing the number of partners would make their life easier,” said Laurent Ruseckas, Caspian analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Kashagan, long neglected by the Soviets in favour of more accessible deposits in Russia and Azerbaijan, is considered the fifth-largest field in the world. It is expected to produce around one million barrels per day in 15 years, but only after the expenditure of anything between $15 and $25 billion.

The consortium is considering pipeline routes through Russia to the Black Sea, through Turkey to the Mediterranean and through Iran to the Gulf, though a pipeline to China is still a possibility, analysts say.—dpa