Thursday, February 23, 2012

Four-Way Cooperation: China, France, Uganda, UK

One of the questions I get asked most often by US government officials is:  How can we (the US) do something cooperatively with China in Africa? The idea in Washington is that a successful cooperative development activity will help to build trust, something sorely lacking these days. My response has always been that whatever you do, it needs to be focused on mutual benefit. The oil industry is an obvious place where vast scope exists for some kind of cooperation based on benefits to all three parties (social, environmental, developmental -- moving up the value chain). So far, it doesn't seem to have happened.

That's why Uganda is interesting. It's not the US, but rather China-Uganda-UK-France. China Daily reported February 21, 2012, that CNOOC (a Chinese oil company), France's Total SA, the UK company Tullow Oil, and Uganda are discussing a joint investment in a refinery to process Uganda's newly discovered oil (the country currently imports all of its petroleum products. No doubt if the project goes forward, a Chinese company will build the refinery. It's developmental, cooperative, "win-win." Can't the US foster something similar, somewhere?

H/T to Chinascope

4 comments:

peter said...

hi, am in Tanzania dealing in mining trade am looking for partner-joint venture in our mines eg Gold, Coal, Tanzanite, Copper ore and Iron ore

Thanks
www.goldbergtz.com
+255 716 731486

Anonymous said...

Although it is a UK listed company Tullow oil is a Irish company from Tullow Co Carlow founded in 1985 by Aidan Heavey. It has move it head office by and forth between the two state for sometime. In has been in Africa since the 1980s starting in Senegal. It normally undertakes exploration acreage and then cooperates with larger companies to fully develop the project. It is no surprise they are cooperating with CNOOC as there had be stories of such cooperation around the Jubilee field offshore Ghana in 2007

Anonymous said...

i hope it works at least china and the irish are leading the way in africa and not paying lip service, we sincerely wellcome the chinese in africa at least the not playing one tribe against the other which is the legacy of the british whom we dont realy need in africa

Anonymous said...

Deborah, thank you for this blog. "The winner takes it all" mentality has to change. Cold war is over.