China isn’t going to go quietly from those oilfields. They are using and supplying Sudan as their proxy.
This is a huge disaster.
Muslim countries serve as nobody's proxy, especially not infidels. Besides, the trend in world oil markets (including in Alaska) is for territories with oil reserves to offer a profit-sharing deal before oil is discovered and to renege on that deal after oil is discovered, such that foreign oil companies that risked huge amounts of capital are left high and dry. The Chinese have had this happen to them in both Iraq and Venezuela.
My interpretation of this incident is that the Sudanese are just fishing in troubled waters, and justifiably so - given (1) weakness on the part of both Gaddafi and the rebels opposing him, (2) NATO's reluctance to risk ground troops in Libya against Gaddafi's rickety military and (3) the troubles in Egypt (traditionally the country that alternated between ruling Sudan and governing it indirectly as a vassal state), who's going to stop Sudan from making a land grab? Sudan is doing what Saddam should have done in Kuwait back in 1990 (to avoid Western intervention) - grab a percentage of the territory and then stand pat. A limited land grab is a border dispute. Nobody gets very involved in border disputes. If the Sudanese stop at Kufra, my feeling is that they have just acquired themselves a new oil-bearing province.
Yep. Seems as if the PRC is filling the void left by the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Chinese have lots of foreign exchange, and a VERY aggressive energy-security policy, which includes “kill baby, kill.”
Having carefully reread the article, it almost sounds as if Sudan is protecting the oil fields from Gaddafi. Since the Chinese had to remove 30,000 oil workers from Libya and are establishing a strong presence in Sudan, perhaps this is a move to protect the oil field infrastructure until such time as this whole mess settles out. I doubt they care very much which group of Libyans they do business with, but the sooner they can do it, the better.
Meanwhile here is more news on the NATO airstrikes in western Libya
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sns-ap-ml-libya,0,3176600.story