DUBAI - China crossed the line first in the race for big oil contracts in post-Saddam Iraq and has gained a head start over Western oil majors in the competition for future energy deals.
China's biggest oil company, state-run CNPC, agreed to a US$3-billion service contract with Iraq on Wednesday. The deal could set a precedent for terms that fall far short of the lucrative contracts the oil majors had hoped for as they jostled for access to the world's third-largest oil reserves.
Starved of investment since the Gulf War of 1990-91 and the subsquent U. S.-led invasion of 2003 that removed former President Saddam Hussein, Iraq holds some of the world's last large, cheap, untapped oil reservoirs.
"The biggest significance of this deal is that CNPC will benefit as the first international oil company to be developing one of the giant discovered oil fields in Iraq in the new era," said Alex Munton, an analyst at global consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
By Amit R. Paley Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, August 29, 2008; Page A08
BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 -- Iraq and China signed a $3 billion deal this week to develop a large Iraqi oil field, the first major commercial oil contract here with a foreign company since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The 20-year agreement calls for the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to begin producing 25,000 barrels of oil a day and gradually increase the output to 125,000 a day, said Asim Jihad, a spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
The contract revamps a deal the Chinese company had reached with Saddam Hussein in 1997 to develop the Ahdab oil field in Wasit province, south of Baghdad near the border with Iran. Unlike that deal, which called for China to share in the revenue, the current contract is based on a fixed-fee structure.
Footprint fireworks broadcast from the Olympics' opening ceremony turned out to be the months-long work of CGI masters, and now the team behind the real fireworks are coming clean about what went down in the China sky.
We love fireworks, but from now on, will we have to see them in person to believe them? This weekend, a Chinese newspaper broke the story that some of the fireworks footage from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was prepared digitally in advance of the broadcast. The Beijing Times reported that the recording of 29 firework footprints walking across the Beijing sky was computer-generated and prepared months—yes, months—ahead of time by deft CGI programmers. The fireworks in question were actually fired off that evening, and a few of them even made it into the broadcast. But because the Beijing Organizing Committee knew that filming fireworks progressing across the city sky would be a logistical and security nightmare, it didn't assign a helicopter to follow the footprints as they ignited. Most of the footprint fireworks that the television audience saw at home (and on screens inside the stadium) were prepared in advance on a computer.
There's some controversy now as to whether NBC, which broadcast the ceremony 12 hours after it happened, properly informed viewers that they were not, in fact, watching real fireworks in what was one of the most highly rated programs of the year. At the time, host Matt Lauer called the footprints "almost animation," leading many to believe that the fireworks were trying to imitate animation by "walking" across the sky—not that what they were watching was physically animated. It's unclear how much the network actually knew at the time of the broadcast. NBC officials and technical crew members did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.
