China, India Scramble For Kazakh Oil

Chinese and Indian state oil companies are seeking to buy a Canadian-based oil company Petrokazahstan.

A joint venture of the China National Petroleum Corporation and PetroChina, its publicly traded subsidiary, offered about $3.2 billion late Monday for PetroKazakhstan.

India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has already reportedly submitted a bid of $3.6 billion in cooperation with the steel producer Mittal Group.

PetroKazakhstan said that it had received the proposals. The company has a large oilfield in Kazakhstan.

The China National Petroleum Corporation already has substantial oil investments of its own in Kazakhstan, and has been trying to build a pipeline to carry the oil to China. The Chinese government has been actively courting Kazakhstan as well, partly because Beijing officials want to make sure that no Muslim insurgency develops in heavily Muslim areas of Xinjiang Province near the Kazakh border.