Thursday, October 8, 2009

While U.S. hunkers down, China is on the move

"Oil in Nigeria (and the Congo and Brazil and Kazakhstan and ...). Natural gas in Iran. Iron ore in Australia. China's hunt for natural resources around the globe, which began in earnest earlier this decade, has intensified as never before.

In September alone, China's sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corp. (CIC), shelled out nearly $1 billion to buy an 11% stake in JSC KazMunaiGas Exploration Production, a Kazakhstan oil and gas company. Just a week earlier CIC paid $850 million to acquire 14.9% of Noble Group, the Hong Kong commodity-trading powerhouse. Earlier this summer the China Development Bank lent Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, $10 billion to help fund exploration in deep waters off Brazil."

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