MAKING REALITY; ASK WHY?
Contrary to public opinion, China’s national oil companies are not ‘locking up’the lion’s share of African oil as part of a centralised quest for energy,”wrote Erica Downs, a China specialist with the Brookings Institution, in a
recent paper. “With the exception of a handful of projects in Sudan, Nigeria and
Angola, most of the African assets held by China’s national oil companies are of
a size and quality of little interest to international oil companies.”
Ouch! The media and bloggers are often misleading. One more example of the ills of blogging about Africa while living outside Africa. I was sold on the hypothesis that China pretty much had the African energy sector wrapped up. My blogging philosophy for 2008 is, "Ask Why?" (borrowing from Enron). I find myself pondering this days about what events are newsworthy, and what events aren't. I also wonder about the influence of the citizen media on mainstream media, with respect to the distortion of reality. It appears that the more one wonders about these, the more it becomes obvious that the mechanics of news is changing. The margin of error between reality and the experts and pseudo experts opinions seem to be growing wider. Meanwhile the confidence of the 'experts', often steeled by the social media, seem to be growing in bounds.
8Comment(s):
I have said that bloggers in diaspora that blog so knowledgably about the country cant possibly be 100% accurate...
I like the fact that you admitted that u might have been misled and i like you, worry about the sometimes skewed news that leaves these shores...
Ah !
I'd blame that one on non-expert western journalist selling the usual "danger from the east" story (remember Japan ?).
Talking about danger from the East...it is amazing the things that go on in Economic departments of American University. Little wonder they produce students that are so 'sold'.
Yea you are right. We sometimes buy the message from the global (Western) media too easily. But according to a BBC documentary, Angola is the second largest supplier of oil to China. That sounds a little more than 'just a handful of projects'. Just thought that we might set the record straight.
And yet, more Angolan oil is exported to the US than to China.
The other thing is that chinese companies would have a really hard time winning contracts before Total, Chevron and ENI who all have been involved in Angola for 20 or 30 years, have fine-tuned their technology, have deep contacts in the government, have huge angolan staffs and have already established their infrastructure (in the whole region actually).
And even between newcomers, one has to remember that Petrobras with their deep-deep water technology and russian companies are involved.
That's a lot of competition.
Yet, there's a second-hand drill market and that one is dominated by the chinese (and a french maverick company called Zeta). The western companies, because of their huge operating costs either are not interested in low productivty drills or get rid of drills once they reach a certain level. Chinese companies being cheap and everything can and do exploit those.
U just never know what u're reading these days. One has to have a technique in mind for double-checking information. :)
This was very good to read. However, China continues to make some serious in roads in various African countries. They have the money to buy the connections they need and sometimes do so with a focus that is troubling.
Nevertheless, a critical approach to the news is always beneficial. We all need to turn the news on its head a couple of times to actually see the true story behind the story. In this case, I sometimes think that the fear of a rising China skews the news that we receive. Consider the toy recall scandals over the last 15 months in the US. I wonder if things will calm down after the Olympics...
Methinks the west sees china as a threat, not because of what it is has done but because of the steps it is starting to take. If the talks between china and several African countries are realized, china's footprints will be all over the landscape.
In most cases, china is not bringing loans (so unlike the West) but is actually investing directly. The yen from china may be small compared to the statkes of the western economies. But the fact that the chink turned up to play at the poker table is enough to command attention.
Suddenly, with the increasing interests of Russia and China, something interesting is happening again in Africa.It is called competition.