Chapter 886 Give up buying
“Yes, I know that the importance of natural gas in the energy field will likely surpass oil in the future, but we predict that oil and gas prices will fall in the next few years, so this Once will suspend participation in the acquisition of shares in Eni East Africa..."
Barron told the CEO of United Energy Group on the phone Epeli Singleton said:
“Not only the oil and gas blocks in East Africa, within three years, we will also suspend the acquisition of other oil and gas blocks. The oil and gas resources we currently have have already It’s enough for us to mine...”
“But PetroChina is very interested in Eni East Africa’s shares...”
“Then tell them that we are willing to cooperate with them in oil and gas exploration and production, natural gas and LNG (liquefied natural gas) value chains, trade and logistics, refining and petrochemicals. However, this acquisition of Eni East Africa’s shares does not meet the requirements. Our strategy...”
What he talked about with Epeli was about PetroChina’s previous contact with United Energy Group, hoping that the two parties would cooperate to acquire Eni East Africa, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italy’s Eni Petroleum. things.
Previously, they had good cooperation with PetroChina in the Colo offshore oil field and the exploration of oil and gas blocks in Southeast Asia by United Energy Group. Based on this, the other party made such a request for cooperation.
Eni is the largest oil group in Italy. Its wholly-owned subsidiary Eni East Africa owns 70% of the deepwater Area 4 block in the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique. The area has up to 85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, exceeding Norway’s total existing natural gas reserves.
However, Barron knows that in the next few years, global oil and gas prices will fall by more than half. In the original time and space oil purchased 28.57% of the shares and obtained 20% of the Area4 block, it cost 4.21 billion US dollars...
Three years later, ExxonMobil purchased 35.7% of Eni East Africa's shares from Eni and acquired 25% of the Area 4 block, but it only spent US$2.8 billion.
It can be said that buying shares of Eni East Africa now is not a wise decision.
Of course, it is impossible for Barron to directly persuade PetroChina to give up its decision to purchase shares of Eni East Africa - after all, it is difficult to persuade the other party now, and it is impossible to reveal his own views on future oil and gas prices. judge.
And PetroChina itself chose to purchase overseas oil and gas resources not entirely because of economic interests, but also with the purpose of reducing China's dependence on coal and meeting its energy needs.
In January this year, severe smog broke out in Yanjing, China. During the entire month of January, there were 25 days of smog, and only 5 days the air was relatively clean.
At that time, the heavy smog forced citizens indoors, disrupted flights, and affected the health of millions of people. During this period, the air pollution index in Yanjing once reached 40 times the safe index.
In response to this crisis, China has begun to manage the environment. In terms of energy, it will reduce its dependence on and use of coal and increase the proportion of clean energy such as natural gas.
Having said that, at the current point in time, if Barron’s had no knowledge of future oil and gas prices, then purchasing Eni East Africa’s natural gas block resources would also be a reasonable decision.
Since the reserves of the Area 4 natural gas field in Mozambique were announced, many international oil giants have extended an olive branch to Eni for cooperation. In addition to PetroChina, they also include ExxonMobil of the United States, Royal Dutch Shell, France's Total and Gazprom. In the end, among these cooperation intentions, Eni Petroleum Company chose PetroChina. On the one hand, the reason is the friendly relationship between China and Mozambique. With the participation of PetroChina, Eni Petroleum Company can minimize the political risks of this project. ...
Secondly, they hope to deepen their cooperation with Huaxia Petroleum Company so that they can control the entire Asian natural gas product market in the future and win huge profits.
Of course, if United Energy Group is willing to cooperate with PetroChina to directly acquire Eni East Africa, Eni will not refuse as long as it can afford a satisfactory price.
After all, as an Italian state-owned enterprise, the current economic situation in Italy means that they can make enough profits through this sale, and they are happy to accept it - when it comes to oil and gas resources, Eni is still not in short supply. In addition to Mozambique in East Africa, Eni, as a veteran oil company, also owns many oil and gas blocks in Africa. For example, their oil and gas blocks in Egypt have very rich reserves.
As Barron said, their decision is not only to give up the purchase of Eni East Africa, but also to suspend the purchase of other oil and gas blocks in the next two to three years.
However, as a good partner with PetroChina, although Barron could not directly persuade the other party to buy shares of Eni East Africa, he still did his best to do so.
In addition to rejecting this cooperation as a subtle reminder to the other party, the investment companies controlled by Barron have also been continuing to short global oil and gas prices - with their large sums of money joining the short-selling, Well, at least the current decline in global oil and gas prices should be smaller than before...
...
“Yes, the decline of print media has become inevitable in recent years. Whether in the United States or Britain, the proportion of young people reading newspapers has been significantly reduced, and print media has been regarded as an 'old antique' , traditional paper media are not trying their best to advance The transformation to the Internet is the final suspension of publication..."
Barron and Ivanta took their children to the mansion on the top floor of the TP Building on Fifth Avenue to gather with her family. Unknowingly, they talked about After seeing the current situation of print media and facing the sighing eyes of others, Barron said calmly:
“In the first half of last year, when the British Financial Times announced that its digital subscribers exceeded the print version for the first time, the media regarded it as an unusual exception. In fact, This kind of unusualness will become the norm in the future. Newspapers owned by Independent Newspapers have already begun to convert to the Internet. The current online revenue has exceeded that of the paper version..."
"So Will Internet media become more and more influential, surpassing paper media? ”
Hearing his father's words, Ivanta smiled and said:
"Although there is still a slight gap now, the Internet has a greater influence among young people, but soon, within four years, with the habits of paper The quality media generation is increasingly accepting of the Internet, especially mobile Internet , this trend will begin to accelerate.”
Seeing Jianguo’s thoughtful look, Barron became convinced. It seemed that at this time, he was already planning what would happen four years later...
(End of this chapter)