Articles today titled ‘Oil sands get vote of confidence’, ‘Ottawa guidelines for state-owned investors get first test’, and ‘Tiomin says Chinese co to buy 70 pct of its Kenya unit’ report further strategic purchases by Chinese interests – a topic I first talked about on this blog many months ago, and consider to be of prime importance as the world moves forward from here.  I consider the transaction discussed in the first two of these articles – the PetroChina purchase from Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. of a 60% interest (for $1.9 billion) in two of its undeveloped Canadian Oil Sands projects – to be by far the more important.  I see the Cdn Oil Sands as a pre-eminent world class asset.  The first article claims “The transaction will hand approximately three billion barrels of Alberta oil to PetroChina, whose parent is the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., but will leave operation of those projects, named MacKay River and Dover, in Canadian hands”.

I can’t help but wonder why the U.S. seems to be taking a sidelines role (at least from a public perspective) in transactions involving the Oil Sands.  The second article does say that it remains unclear how the U.S. government would view a growing Chinese presence in the oil sands given the U.S.’s strategic interest to have a secure source of oil supply from Canada – but that the current U.S. Administration so far has been silent on this issue.

The third article reports that Canada’s Tiomin Resources has signed an agreement with China’s Jinchuan Group Ltd whereby the top Chinese nickel producer will acquire a 70% equity interest in Tiomin Kenya Ltd which owns 100% of the Kwale mineral sands project in Kenya.

I see these transactions as further examples of continued investment by China in assets it believes strategic to it.  I believe that within in comparatively few years continued acquisitive behavior by China and Chinese companies very likely will contribute significantly to what I see as an ongoing change in the balance of world economic power away from the U.S.

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