That amounts to $15 a barrel compared with the $8.50 Petroleo Brasileiro SA paid last month for assets in Brazil, said Neil Beveridge, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
“This shows the importance that China places on securing oil resources overseas,” Beveridge said by telephone from Hong Kong. “This is a key emerging deepwater basin, and there are a lot of developments taking place. Sinopec has a good position established, but the price it has paid is very high.”
Chinese companies spent a record $32 billion last year buying energy and resources assets abroad. Sinopec Group’s investment is the country’s second-largest overseas acquisition and follows the company’s purchase of Addax Petroleum Corp. for C$8.3 billion ($8 billion) last year to gain reserves in Iraq’s Kurdistan and West Africa. Cnooc Ltd. and state-controlled Sinochem Group have paid about $3.1 billion each for stakes in oil producers in Argentina and Brazil.
