BP in negotiations for stake of CAO
By Mai Dou (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-22 06:37

BP, Europe's biggest oil company, is among several potential investors, to buy at least a 20 per cent stake in China Aviation Oil (CAO) Singapore Co Ltd, people familiar with deal said yesterday.

Gerald Woon, the spokesman of CAO Singapore and Bian Hui, spokesman of the Beijing-based parent CAO Holdings, yesterday declined to comment, but Woon said CAO would make a formal announcement by the end of this month at the earliest.

A Financial Times report yesterday said that BP and Temasek Holdings, the Singapore State investment group, are expected to inject at least US$55m into CAO in return for about a 30 per cent stake in the troubled Chinese state-owned jet fuel importer.

BP is expected to buy a stake of more than 20 per cent in CAO, with Temasek taking less than 10 per cent. Vitol, a Dutch oil trader that had been mentioned as a possible investor, is believed to have been dropped from the deal, and CAO Holdings will still remain the biggest single shareholder, quoted by an unidentified person in the Financial Times.

Both BP and Temasek yesterday declined to comment, and Vitol was not available for comment.

The deal is among one of the rescue efforts to revive CAO, which was on the verge of collapse a year ago under more than half a billion US dollars in trading losses.

Local media had reported that shares in CAO could resume trading at the end of 2005 or early next year, after being suspended in the wake of the trading scandal.

Chen Hongbing, a senior broker with the Singapore-based Ginga Petroleum Ptd Ltd, said the move could work successfully for the BP-CAO deal, since BP has been eyeing the Chinese market for its huge market potential as the world's second-largest energy consumer after the United States, after it broke into Russia by buying half of Tyumen Oil Company (TNK).

CAO Singapore holds a near-monopoly on China's jet fuel imports and is the international procurement arm of State-owned Beijing-based CAO Holdings, which owns a separate firm that distributes and sells aviation fuel on the Chinese mainland.

BP already has a joint-venture with China's domestic oil giants to run 1,000 service stations in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, and owns 24.5 percent of South China Bluesky Aviation Oil Co Ltd, the supplier to 15 civilian airports.

In a BP-related business thrust into China's energy market, the UK-based oil company and China National Offshore Oil Corp(CNOOC) were reported to be seeking a US$1.3 billion loan to develop the Tangguh liquefied natural gas (LNG) Greenfield Project in eastern Indonesia.

"The Tangguh Project is in active discussions with a number of financial institutions on indicative loan terms and conditions, and progress continues to be made," BP spokesman Michael Zhao yesterday told China Daily.

The project will build two LNG plants with capacity to produce 7.6 million tons per year of LNG, and will also include gas production facilities and other infrastructure facilities such as a seaport and an airfield, sources said

BP and CNOOC hold 37.16 per cent and 16.96 per cent stakes respectively in the project, the top two shareholders.

(China Daily 11/22/2005 page10)