One Belt, One Road : China and the Oil Roads. The OBOR initiative is not a castle in the air. POLICIES and LAWS

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1 POLICIES and LAWS One Belt, One Road : China and the Oil Roads Lu Ruquan (International Department, China National Petroleum Corporation) In the past one and a half years, if one were to have sifted through the keywords of reports, comments, and studies on China s economy and politics, the One Belt, One Road initiative(abbrev. as OBOR hereafter)must have been one of the most popular words. When analyzing OBOR, the oil and gas industry is a strategic industry that no one can exclude. In fact, Chinese oil companies, especially the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), have cooperated with other countries along OBOR guidelines for more than twenty years and thus possess a first mover advantage. Powered by the OBOR initiative, this advantage should be strengthened, although there are still many problems to be solved in the future. The OBOR initiative is not a castle in the air From September 3 to 13 in 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping visited Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, he delivered an important, symbolically significant speech in Nazarbayev University (a university named for the current president of Kazakhstan). His speech was titled Promote People-toPeople Friendship and Create a Better Future, in which, for the first time, he gave a comprehensive elaboration on China s strategic initiative of building a Silk Road Economic Belt. He also put forward the concept of Five Exchanges, i.e., policy communication, road connectivity, trade facilitation, currency circulations, and people-to-people exchanges. Why did President Xi choose to first propose the framework of OBOR in Kazakhstan rather than in countries with more power, such as Russia, or at a more important international platform, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? From the author s point of view, one important reason is that China already had important strategic interests in Kazakhstan, compared with other countries (such as Russia) along the Silk Road Economic Belt. The core of this strategic interest is oil and gas. By the end of 2014, Chinese oil companies, led by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), had invested nearly USD 40 billion in the oil and gas industry (including exploration and production, transportation by pipelines, refining, marketing, engineering services, and international trade) of Central Asia Russia area, especially in Kazakhstan. Taken the time value of the invested money into consideration, the USD 40 billion, which was cumulatively invested, is estimated to be worth more than USD 50 billion now. In short, the oil and gas industry has great first mover advantages regarding current and future OBOR development. If we look carefully at the main itineraries of President Xi s visit to Kazakhstan, more than half of them were directly or indirectly related to the oil and gas industry. 7

2 In fact, Chinese oil companies have been implementing the OBOR initiative with their global operations since ten years ago. These operations were that of the individual behaviors of oil companies under the guidance of contemporary national energy strategic planning. Some of the operations were masterpieces. For example, CNPC dominated the completion of the four strategic passages for oil and gas: namely the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and East Maritime passages. In the Northwest direction, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline A, B, and C (with an annual capacity of 44 bcm in total) and the Kazahkstan-China Oil Pipeline(with an annual capacity of 20 million tons) have been completed and put into operation. The Central Asia Gas Pipeline D has been launched with an annual capacity of 30 bcm. In the Northeast direction, the Russia-China Oil Pipeline has been completed and put into operation, with an annual capacity of 15 million tons. The Russia-China East Gas Pipeline, with an annual capacity of 38 bcm, was started in 2015 and is expected to be completed at around In the Southwest direction, the Myanmar-China Oil Pipeline (with an annual capacity of 22 million tons) and the Myanmar-China Gas Pipeline (with an annual capacity of 12 bcm) have been completed. In the East direction, there are maritime passages. In 2014, CNPC imported million tons of crude oil and more than 5 million tons of LNG. The strategic energy passages in the northwest and the northeast directions became the oil and gas bridges along the Silk Road Economic Belt, and the Myanmar- China oil and gas pipelines became the oil and gas bridges along the 21 st Century Maritime Silk Road. These oil and gas bridges are definitely pioneers, as seen through the lack of bridges of other industries. Oil and gas imported by CNPC through the four strategic passages accounted for 21.6% and 71.6% of China s total oil and gas imports, respectively. The Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling platform, tailored to oil and gas development in the South China Sea (SCS), is CNOOC s powerful tool for deepwater drilling and exploration in the SCS. The platform is the world s first platform designed with the extreme sea conditions of the SCS in mind, and it can survive a once-every-200-years typhoon. Haiyang Shiyou 981 can operate at any sea except the North Pole. Its maximum operating water depth is 3000 meters, and it can drill meters underground. If it were established 3000 meters above the Beijing city, its anchor chains and pipelines would cover the entire area inside the 6 th Ring Road. The anchor chains used to fix the platform to the ground would reach outside the 6 th Ring Road. Visionaries from Chinese oil companies had put forward business expansion strategies and road maps similar to those of OBOR years ago. In November 2012, Liu Guizhou from CNPC Russia published an extensive article in the journal International Petroleum Economics. Titled The Geopolitics in Central Asia and its Implications to Chinese Oil Companies, this article systematically elaborated on the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt. In conclusion, at least from the perspective of the oil industry, there is basis for the building of OBOR. OBOR is not a castle in the air, as some scholars have defined it. Countries along the oil roads : N oil and gas circle Some scholars and institutions define OBOR as being made up of 65 countries and regions in the world, even including some countries in Europe and Africa. In the author s opinion, this concept is so broad that it is meaningless. Strictly speaking, OBOR should be composed of four regions the Central Asia countries, Russia, and China, which are the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; the ten ASEAN countries plus China, Japan, and Korea, which are members of the ASEAN+3 mechanism; and five countries in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan). Taking the oil and gas industry, the oil and gas resource endowment of the three regions, and the achievements of Chinese oil companies previous international operations all into consideration, the author puts forward the framework of the N oil and gas circle for OBOR. The first 1 refers to China, the second 1 refers to Russia. 6 refers to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. 5 refers to five countries in South Asia Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. N refers to relevant oil and gas export countries in the Middle East and Africa. The above-mentioned countries only include Myanmar in ASEAN, mainly because of Myanmar s irreplaceable position both in geopolitics and in the construction of an energy security system between China and its neighboring countries. Indonesia, surely, is a key country in OBOR. However, its relative importance in terms of energy geopolitics is not as high as that of Myanmar s value is to China. The N oil and gas circle is in fact the oil roads of OBOR. 8

3 The positioning of countries along the oil roads China is the starting point of the oil roads, Russia is the key point of the oil roads, the six countries in Central Asia are the foothold of the oil roads, and the five countries in South Asia are the upgrading point of the oil roads. This is the author s positioning of countries along the oil roads. As the initiator of the oil roads, China should take the responsibility of acting like an engine and leading. Engine means that China has a huge and growing domestic oil and gas market, and the market is expected to increase in size in the future for a long period of time. In April 2015, China replaced the US as the world s largest net importer of crude oil. If there was no Chinese market, the construction of the oil roads would lose its driving force. China should also play the role as the designer in the construction of oil roads, which means that China should propose top-level design solutions for the construction of the oil roads. (1) Russia is the key point of oil roads. Since 2014, the oil and gas cooperation between China and Russia, which has existed for the past twenty years, has begun to accelerate. Besides the long-term purchase and supply agreement, which amounts 30 million tons per year, the Russia-China East Gas Pipeline, which was negotiated many times before but had obtained no results in the past years, finally reached a breakthrough and an agreement; substantial progress has been made in the negotiations over the Russia-China West Gas Pipeline; Russia is even ready to cooperate with China on its key oilfields. Leaving aside the underlying factors behind the change, the huge complementarity and the cooperation potential of oil and gas cooperation between China and Russia determines that Russia will certainly be the key point of oil and gas cooperation in OBOR. If China wants to promote the construction of OBOR and oil roads, Russia would be a place that we cannot bypass. Russia has the world s largest gas reserve and the world s 8 th largest oil reserve. Russia has the world s richest oil and gas resources while China has the world s most vigorous and largest potential market. These two countries border each other without any third country in between. Therefore, no matter what from the perspective of geopolitics, resources, markets, ideologies, or bilateral relationships, these two countries are the most complementary to each other in terms of oil and gas cooperation. (2) Six countries in Central Asia are the foothold of oil roads. From the perspective of the current achievements in oil and gas cooperation in OBOR, Central Asia (six countries) is an area with the most strength and a pre-existing basis for the construction of oil roads. In this area, take CNPC alone, whose annual oil and gas production capacity reaches 40 million tons of oil equivalent, whose annual oil transportation capacity reaches 20 million tons, and whose annual gas transportation capacity reaches 40 bcm. The area is rich in oil and gas resources, especially in the Caspian area. There are a few giant conventional oil and gas fields that were discovered after 1990, most of which are located in the Caspian area. For example, the Tengiz oilfield and the Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan and the ACG oilfield in Azerbaijan are all expected to exhibit an annual production capacity of 50 million tons of oil equivalent. The six countries in Central Asia are different from each other. Kazakhstan is rich in oil, Turkmenistan is rich in gas, and Azerbaijan is rich in oil and gas. Although Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan are all lacking of oil or gas, they are very important transit countries for oil and gas pipelines. The construction of oil roads would be incomplete should we miss any country in this area. In addition, Central Asia is a core part of Eurasia, and it connects us to the Middle East, which is the world s largest oil depot. Therefore, Central Asia is the core cooperation area of the oil roads. (3) Five countries in South Asia are upgrading points of oil roads. South Asia has been ignored by researchers for a long time, mainly because there is little oil or gas there. In addition, many years ago, the core country in South Asia India regarded China as its largest potential competitor in the world. In overseas oil and gas cooperation, Indian s oil companies took on Chinese oil companies as rivals. Therefore, there has been no substantial cooperation in regards to oil or gas between the oil companies of China and India. A typical example is that of the TAPI pipeline, which was backed by major western countries while excluding China,. The TAPI pipeline is an important link for constructing South Asia s strategic oil and gas corridors. Now it seems that the relationship between China and India is improving. The landmark event that marked this thawing of relations was that President Xi Jinping met India s Prime Minister Modi in Xi an during Mr.Modi s visit to China in May This meeting was of great significance, Xi an is a starting city of OBOR, which was generally recognized by the domestic people. The construction of OBOR and the oil roads requires the 9

4 engagement of India. Of course, India must get a fat economic return: the oil and gas supply security system that covers South Asia and China. Only when China s neighboring countries, such as India, get safe and smooth oil and gas supply systems can China s own oil and gas supply security system be truly safe and long lasting. It is undesirable to sacrifice the safety of other countries in order to safeguard one s own safety. In addition, the gas potential in the waters of the Bay of Bengal cannot be overlooked. On one hand, Korean oil companies have built more than 5 bcm of natural gas production capacity so far, and the capacity will only increase further in the future. On the other hand, Afghanistan also holds great potential. Although its domestic security conditions are severe, its position as a strategic hub cannot be neglected. Additionally, as a country friendly to China, Pakistan will play an active role in building the oil roads. (4)The Middle East and Africa can be the outskirts and important substitutes. Asia is located to the east of the world. China is located at the east of Asia. The Middle East, also called West Asia, is located in the west of Asia, while Central Asia refers to the above-mentioned six countries within the Central Asian area. Strictly speaking, the Middle East (West Asia) and Africa belong to the outskirts of OBOR. In the past twenty years, investment in oil was the majority of all Chinese companies investments in the Middle East and Africa. CNPC alone has invested more than USD 20 billion in oil in the Middle East and Africa individually. Together with other Chinese oil companies, the total investment is estimated to exceed USD 40 billion. In the future, the investments in these two areas from Chinese oil companies will be no less than that of the investments made in China s neighboring areas, such as Central Asia, Russia, and South Asia. To build the oil and gas industry layout of OBOR in the coming ten years For now, and in the coming ten years, the top priority is to build the oil and gas industry layout of OBOR, which is centered by the N oil and gas circle and extends to key oil and gas resource countries in the Middle East and Africa. The building of oil roads involves various kinds of businesses. The positioning of each business should be as follows: oil and gas investment projects are critical; international trade is the link; refining and chemicals are markets to be expanded; technical services are platforms; equipment manufacturing provides criteria; and energy finance brings added value. For more than a century now, one of the features of the world s oil and gas industry has been the projectized investment and operation. A project could be the exploration and development of an oilfield, the construction of an oil/gas pipeline, the construction of a refinery, or even a drilling service contract of 100 wells. Project management is the core management of the oil industry. A vivid metaphor would be to compare an oil and gas project to a real estate project. The company/ organization which invests, called the oil company in the oil circle, is like the real estate developer. It organizes all kinds of people and builds a high quality oilfield or refinery within the range of a budget and all according to a certain plan or schedule. Service providers and equipment manufacturers are like construction companies and materials suppliers. Middle and large oil and gas investment projects will be essential in the building of oil roads in OBOR. It is predictable that the investment engines will be E&P projects in Central Asia and Russia, oil/gas pipeline projects that link China and Central Asia, Russia, and Myanmar, oil/gas pipeline projects that link China and South Asia, Chinese companies refining and chemical projects in Central Asia and South Asia, and Russian companies refining and chemical joint ventures and possible gas stations in China. The average annual investment will be more than USD 20 billion (about RMB 120 billion) if the above-mentioned projects can be pushed forward normally. In the future construction of the oil roads, the gas trading volume by cross-border pipelines will be as much as 100 bcm per year. The annual value of trade will be more than RMB 350 billion. The oil trading volume by cross-border pipelines will be as much as 60 million tons per year. The annual value of trade will be more than RMB 200 billion. These figures are very considerable, which bonds the concerned parties together. The refining and chemical business is the segment that is the closest to the consumption market. No matter where, whether in core areas such as Central Asia and South Asia, or in outskirts such as the Middle East and Africa, refineries, chemical plants, and gas stations will be the key points for building oil roads in the future. The technology content of the oil and gas industry has always been in the technical services sector, where technological innovation originates from. In the building of oil roads, not only can the technical services business generate revenue and profit while cultivating local technical staff 10

5 for resource countries, but it can also act as both the platform for technological innovation and as the platform to transfer advanced geophysical prospecting and drilling technologies to resource countries. Many believe that, in the name of OBOR, China can transfer its surplus manufacturing capacity, which was caused by the investment-driven pattern during the past dozens of years, to neighboring countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. In my opinion, this type of thinking is short-sighted. Once neighboring countries have the impression that OBOR is meant to transfer surplus capacity or even inferior capacity, the future of OBOR, which China regards as a grand strategy, would be very dim. From the perspective of the oil roads, it is key to promote China s standards for the oil industries in OBOR-related countries by exporting equipment and setting up equipment manufacturing bases in resource countries. Learning from the global experiences of the European and American large international oil companies, we can see that the standards refer to initiative, the right of speech, and profitability. There is nothing more important than to master these standards. Large oil and gas investment projects usually involve billions or even tens of billions of US dollars. Energy and finance always bring out the best in each other. So far, China has established an infrastructure investment fund for OBOR (the Silk Road Fund). Considering that the oil and gas industry along the OBOR has a certain foundation (mainly oil and gas investment) and the first mover advantage, it can be reasonably concluded that the OBOR holds a great potential. Learning from the Silk Road Fund, we can set up an OBOR Energy Fund for large energy construction projects and large oil and gas exploration projects. What s more, the oil and gas business is a key service segment of the newlyestablished Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), of existing large state-owned commercial banks, and of small or micro banks. By providing services to oil and gas businesses, Chinese banks can also realize cross-border capital transfer and internationalization at the same time. Oil and gas industry to continuously support the implementation of OBOR In a comparatively longer period in the future, how can the oil and gas industry continuously support the implementation of OBOR? The answers are to deepen and consolidate the Five Exchanges and to prevent big geopolitical and country-specific risks. Among the Five Exchanges, road connectivity and trade exchange have done well in the oil and gas industry; pipeline connections area kind of road connectivity. There is more to be done in the other three Exchanges. In the aspect of policy communication, the ideal target is to set up a pattern similar to the European Union (EU) or the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It will perhaps take tens of years for the policy communication of OBOR to reach that of the EU. In the aspect of currency exchange, the author hopes that most of the investment, trade, and technical service clearing among OBOR countries will be done through renminbi. Besides mass scale currency swaps and clearing by renminbi, key points should also include financing support and developing finance. Speaking for the oil and gas industry, it is essential to develop a multi-country and multi-party investment and financing mechanism for large and super large oil/gas upstream, middle stream, and downstream projects. For example, we can popularize the investment pattern of the four countries and six parties to lower the funding pressure and risk on Chinese parties while also bringing in regional giants such as India and Russia to reduce their doubt as much as possible. It is difficult to realize people-to-people exchange. The precondition of people-to-people exchange is the exchange of culture and civilization. Central Asia, Russia, and South Asia each belong to different types of civilization and religion, which makes it hard to realize the exchange of civilization. One essential factor of people-to-people exchange is that China, as a big power and the sponsor country, must learn how to take different perspectives and view a problem from the point of view of other countries and people. Moreover, let us talk about how to prevent major risks on the oil roads. In the comparatively longer period in the future, there will be risks and challenges in oil and gas cooperation between the OBOR countries. The first category is composed of geopolitical risks. The geopolitical risk triggered by the Ukraine crisis and the gambling among the US, Russia, and the EU will last in the next period to come. Oil and gas cooperation in OBOR needs to balance between China and Russia, Central Asia and Russia, and among the Central Asia countries. It is essential not to act with undue haste so as to avoid spoiling the ship for a halfpennyworth of tar. The second category is made up of the risks of political change. There is the severe problem of gerontocracies in major resource countries, especially in Central Asia s Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is time to consider the state of China-Central Asia oil and gas cooperation in the 11

6 period after Nazarbayev s or Karimov s rule. The third category is the resource supply risk. Currently, most of the Chinese oil companies oilfields in Central Asia are in the late stage of development, and there has been no largescale progress in Chinese oil companies participation in Russia s upstream sector. There are uncertainties about the resource basis of oil and gas cooperation in OBOR. We should make breakthroughs in the Caspian Sea. The fourth category is that of the risk of interest and exchange rates. The finance policies in Russia and Central Asia are extremely unstable. For example, Kazakhstan s KZT depreciated sharply in the first half of 2014, which caused great losses to Chinese oil companies business in Kazakhstan. We cannot exclude the possibility that the ruple and the KZT will continue to depreciate. The fifth category is the fiscal and taxation risk. The fiscal and taxation terms are comparatively unstable in Central Asia, Russia, Myanmar, and Indonesia. For example, in the first half of 2014, the Kazakhstani government lifted the crude oil import tariff from USD 40 per ton to USD 60 per ton, which caused a profit reduction to Chinese oil companies projects. Frequent changes of fiscal and taxation terms in the above-mentioned areas is another major risk for oil and gas cooperation in OBOR. The sixth category is the corporate and governmental governance risk. Governmental and corporate governance are not so transparent in resource countries, including Russia and those countries in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, which brings legal compliance challenges to Chinese oil companies. The above-mentioned risks all stem from the geopolitical or economic level. The most complicated risk comes from religion. The world is facing cooperation and confrontation among the Islamic civilizations, the Chinese civilization, and the Christian civilizations. It is very easy to fall into a zero-sum game or a lose-lose situation for everyone. Moreover, during the development of the oil roads, China will gradually face real or potential competition with the global super power (US) and the regional powers (Russia, India, Japan, etc.) in OBORrelated countries. If China cannot control the divergences or minimize frictions by reaching strategic understandings and cooperation agreements, competitions between big powers, together with internal risks and cross-border threats in OBOR-related countries, would generate a series of negative chain reactions. 12