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SCMP Reporter

China's booming economy is fuelling a quest to broaden the energy base and find new suppliers

Senior ministers at the Benin embassy in Beijing worked for months last year to try to get President Hu Jintao  to visit the nation during a tour of Africa last February.

But their pleas fell on deaf ears. When the Foreign Ministry announced Mr Hu's itinerary to France and three African states, Benin was not on the list.

The president was to visit Egypt, Gabon and Algeria after his visit to Paris as a guest of French President Jacques Chirac at the G7 meeting. Analysts were not surprised with Mr Hu's visit to geopolitically important Egypt or Algeria, but many wondered why he visited Gabon.

A dejected diplomat in Beijing's Benin embassy said: 'We're a socialist-Marxist state and we've had 30 years of ties with the People's Republic of China and yet they bypassed us to go to Gabon. This tells me that China has no friends but rather only interests.'

Mr Hu's visit to Gabon was indeed about interests. He helped to seal a deal from the oil-rich, army-led state. China would buy a guaranteed supply of 20,000 barrels of crude oil a day and, in addition, state-run oil trading giant Sinopec secured rights to explore for oil both onshore as well as offshore in the South Atlantic.

China's fast-paced annual growth has driven the nation on a quest for oil. This week's announcement by the Beijing-based Boao Forum for Asia that it would hold a forum to discuss regional energy co-operation in Tehran, Iran, next month  further illustrates China's hunger for oil. Boao, headed by former vice- minister of commerce Long Yongtu , is China's main initiative to woo Southeast Asian states.

'What is a forum that targets Asia doing in Iran?' asked a Southeast Asian diplomat based in Beijing. 'China must really be desperate for oil.'

China will send a group of 50 top managers from the three leading state-run oil companies as well as a host of top politicians to the forum.

Among them are Fu Chengyu,   president  of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Wang Tao, a retired minister of the former Ministry of Petroleum Industry, and Xu Dingming,  the natural resources director-general at the National Commission of Development and Reform.

'After this conference, there is even the possibility of the formation of a regional entity that co-ordinates Asia's energy needs,' said Mr Long.

Ferydoun Verdi Nejad,  the Iranian ambassador to China, said his nation hoped to sell a lot of oil to China and to the Asian region.

'We hope to use this forum to strengthen bilateral co-operation between our countries and with Asia,' he said.

China consumed 250 million tonnes of crude oil last year  and is expected to consume 300 million this year, according to Sinopec. The nation became a net importer of oil 11 years ago.

'China must broaden its energy base and find new suppliers, as an inability to meet spiralling demands for power will undermine its economic growth,' said a report that will appear in the July issue of Jane's Intelligence Review.

Xia Yishan,  a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, and an energy expert, said he believed that the nation could manage to avoid an energy crisis as long as it planned properly.

China supplies 60 per cent of its own oil consumption, with most of it from its fields in Xinjiang , Heilongjiang  and offshore in the South China sea. 'We need to control our oil consumption,' said Mr Xia.



Thirst for oil that knows no bounds