US in no position to lecture China on greed for oileunice_chock@hotmail.com
News that China’s third-largest oil company, CNOOC, is trying to buy Unocal, the California-based oil company, for $18.5 billion, has produced predictable (and grandstanding) yelps from U.S. politicians warning of growing Chinese power over the U.S. economy. It has not, of course, aroused much American self-awareness about our self-induced economic problems.
The real significance of the Unocal bid is that China, like America, is desperate for oil. Further, the firm conveniently has considerable reserves in Asia. As the Middle Kingdom and other industrializing countries, especially India, grow, they will presumably need more and more oil.
What this means for the world oil market is ominous: The rate at which reserves will be used up is apt to be considerably faster than most people have anticipated, and the prices will presumably be much higher. Far fewer kicks on Route 66!
Meanwhile, we Americans continue to build barriers to alternative-energy sources, continue to use the world’s most energy-wasteful transport system, grossly overuse plastic (made from oil), and otherwise live as if $10-a-barrel petroleum will soon return and reign forever. But the idea that we can continue to use 25 percent of the world’s oil is a dream. There’s just too much competition for the stuff.
There are many reasons to complain about U.S. trade with China: China’s manipulation of currency, its massive intellectual-property theft, its lack of basic protections for low-wage and even (in some places) slave-labor workers, and its seeming nonchalance about pollution (though that’s to be expected in poor but industrializing nations).
Still, it’s hard to fault the Chinese for wanting to collect as much crude as they can. We’re in no position to give them lectures on the topic.
Robert Whitcomb is a writer for the Providence Journal.
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