The South Asia Channel

The not-so-great game

In about a week, the Afghan Ministry of Mines will announce that the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) — the largest state-owned Chinese company — has won the rights to develop and explore several oil fields in the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan. How was CNPC able to win a tender for such a ...

By , an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, and
hellosputnik via Flickr
hellosputnik via Flickr
hellosputnik via Flickr

In about a week, the Afghan Ministry of Mines will announce that the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) — the largest state-owned Chinese company — has won the rights to develop and explore several oil fields in the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan.

How was CNPC able to win a tender for such a strategic resource in a country where the United States wields tremendous influence? Amazingly, one reason is that the U.S. Defense Department, whose Task Force on Business and Stability Operations, which is charged with resuscitating the economies of Afghanistan and Iraq, designed and oversaw a tender process that played to the strengths of Chinese state-owned companies over Western private ones.

Read the rest of the article here.

Alexander Benard is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a senior managing director at Cerberus.

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