Reply #17: This is an excellent summary of the action and players

[kenny blankenship]

but there is another player waiting in the wings, kept off stage momentarily. In the middle of 2005, when the US was losing its grip on Iraq, the UNOCAL corporation, which is the possessor of pipeline rights in Afghanistan and coincidently? the former employer of Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, came up for sale. The high bidder for UNOCAL wasn't ExxonMobil or ConocoPhillips or Sunoco, but a name unfamiliar to most Americans: the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). CNOOC is 70% owned by the Chinese government. Washington fairly exploded in protest. In the face of a certain blockage of the sale, CNOOC withdrew its $18.5 billion bid and UNOCAL was married off to US based Chevron instead.
Cnooc drops $18.5 bn Unocal bid


Of course, if the present US puppet govt. of Afghanistan should fall to forces with grievances against America, those pipeline rights contracts now owned by Chevron may be voided, and the new govt may draw up a new lease arrangement with new parties, much as the new govt of Iraq shredded oil drilling contracts inked by the old Saddam Hussein govt. If the US fails to carry off the imperial nation and pipeline building project in Afghanistan it knows who is most likely to try next. China, which has a border with Afghanistan thanks to a slender strip of land just wide enough for a pipeline may get access to Central Asian natural gas after all.