The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)
(SEHK: 857),(SSE: 601857),(NYSE: PTR) 中国石油天然气集团公司
is a state-owned fuel-producing corporation in the People's Republic of China.

• It is China's largest integrated oil and gas company.
• As of 2006, it was the second largest company in the world in terms of number of employees.
• CNPC holds proved reserves of 3.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
• CNPC spun off most of its domestic assets into a separate company, PetroChina, during a restructuring.
• CNPC has 30 international exploration and production projects with operations in Azerbaijan, Canada, Indonesia, Myanmar, Oman, Peru, Sudan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The Rest @ Wikipedia

This looks like a large multinational corporation, but it is important to understand that it an acting policy arm of the Chinese government...

CNPC, or 中国石油天然气集团公司 = Chinese Government

Why is that important to Africa ?

• Companies make agreements all the time time to keep each other's information private (see confidentiality agreement , called a non-discosure agreement in the US). In example, should an oil exploration company have some promising findings, it may want to share with oil investors, they may want to sign a confidentiality agreement before they come to an agreement about wheterht to go into business together.
• Since CNPC = China and China = CNPC, everypart of Chinese national intelligence, military intelligence must get the information.
• When CNPC makes a strategic decision, is a state policy move, or a business deicsion?
• State objectives and priorities will trump business ones in every case.
• How can the parternship be equal? CNPC becomes the master, the other party, the servant.

......At the very least it is not a straightforward business decision, so as they say "buyer beware"

Gazprom, a Russian state-controlled oil company operates in much the same way.

-Shimron