Via The Financial Post, an interesting article on China Petrochemical Corporation’s (Sinopec) offer to pay $1.9 billion for Tanganyika Oil Co. to gain oil and natural gas operations in Syria.  As the article notes:

“…The bid for Tanganyika came one month after Sinopec Group lost to India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. in the tussle for Imperial Energy Plc. Acquiring Tanganyika would boost the Chinese company’s oil production by about 2%, helping it to meet surging demand in the world’s fastest-growing economy.

“The acquisition could be a big breakthrough for the Chinese oil giant in terms of its overseas expansion strategy,” Wang Jing, an oil analyst with Orient Securities Co., said by telephone in Shanghai today. “China should continue acquiring good overseas assets to safeguard its energy supplies.”

…Tanganyika holds operating interests in two Syrian production-sharing agreements covering the Oudeh and Tishrine/Sheikh Mansour blocks. Gross field output in Syria rose more than 24% in the second quarter, averaging 16,670 barrels of oil a day, it said in its Aug. 14 earnings statement.

The Canadian company, partly owned by Sweden’s Lundin family, takes its name from a former East African republic located by Lake Tanganyika, now part of Tanzania. The company was registered as Canadian Lynx Petroleum Ltd. until 1995.

Chinese state oil companies are seeking energy assets overseas to meet the country’s rising oil consumption, which rose 4.3% to 7.86 million barrels a day in 2007, according to the BP Statistical Review. Citic Resources Holdings Ltd., a unit of China’s fourth-biggest oil producer, bought an oil field in Kazakhstan for US$1-billion in June last year.”