Noticed an interesting article in today’s International Herald Tribune, further emphasizing China’s interest in gaining access to Africa’s petroleum resources. While we have reviewed China’s engagement of several African markets in previous posts, this was the first article focused primarily on Chad.

“….Despite advanced prospecting by French and other Western firms dating back to the 1970s, Chad’s oil had never been tapped. The nation was simply too unstable and the price of oil too low to justify investing much here. The oil that had been found was of low quality, and there was no practical way to get it out.

That changed in 2000, when the World Bank agreed to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665-mile pipeline connecting Chad to Cameroon on the condition that oil revenues be used to fight poverty.”

But, perhaps of even more intrigue is the idea that China may be building a type of pan-African pipeline grid in order to move & aggregate petroleum from smaller finds around the continent.

“…The Canadians and the Americans are only interested in really big finds,” said a veteran Western oil production engineer who works under contract here for the China National Petroleum Company, the CNPC “Anything else they think is not worth their time. The Chinese have a different approach. They are happy with the smaller finds, just lots of them. “They seem to have a different time frame, too,” the engineer added. “They plan to be here for a while.”

Indeed, the Chinese dream in this region consists of making finds here and there, using the World Bank financed pipeline to transport the oil and eventually building new pipelines to connect with a Chinese-built grid in Sudan….”