Hu to woo Saudis after US, seeking energy security

BEIJING, Apr 21: Chinese President Hu Jintao has wooed the United States with a message that his nation wants to ''peacefully develop'', but the next stop on his tour will highlight just how anxious China is for oil to fuel that growth.

Hu will make a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia from tomorrow, just three months after the recently crowned King Abdullah visited China on his first-ever state visit as king.

By flying from Washington to Riyadh, Hu is demonstrating how important the Saudi kingdom and its oil are for China, whose burgeoning demand has helped push world crude prices to this week's all-time highs over 72 dollars a barrel.

''The fact that Hu is moving to reciprocate the King's visit so quickly, and on the heels of his U S visit, is intended to signal how importantly both sides take the relationship,'' said Flynt Leverett, a former U S policymaker now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington.

''For China, energy in the end is a strategic issue, and Saudi Arabia is the big enchilada in global oil supplies.'' Hu's visit may not yield immediate deals for the world's number two oil consumer, said John Calabrese, an expert on China-Saudi ties at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

But across Eest Asia, Beijing is wooing oil-rich state with assurances that it needs sure supplies, and comes knocking without the heavy political baggage of the United States.

''They've been slow, patient and chipping away, and it's beginning to pay off,'' Calabrese said of China.

CHINA'S TOP OIL SUPPLIER

Until the 1980s, Saudi Arabia regarded Communist China as a godless, revolutionary threat. But China's pragmatic foreign policy and growing demand for oil have erased that past, said Leverett. The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1990. Saudi Arabia was China's top oil supplier in 2005, providing 17.5 per cent of its imports with 443,600 barrels per day (bpd).

Saudi Aramco last year signed a 3.5 billion dollars deal with Exxon Mobil Corp and Sinopec, China's top refiner, to expand a refinery in south Fujian province. It is also in talks with Sinopec about investing in a plant in the northern port of Qingdao.

Saudi Arabia keeps powerful security ties with the United States, and it has insisted that its growing ties with Beijing are no threat to Washington.

''We don't think we need to counter-balance our relationship with the United States,'' the Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, told a US television interview in January. ''There is no contradiction whatsoever or competition in our eyes from selling to China and India.'' But Calabrese said that while Saudi Arabia does not want to test ties with Washington, it may want to hedge against any future tensions.

''A visit like this can push buttons to remind Washington it has something to lose from a deteriorating relationship,'' he said of Hu's trip to Saudi Arabia.

China's courting of West Asian countries has provoked some warnings from some Washington officials that China hopes to weaken US sway around the Gulf, Calabrese said.

But even if China wants a bigger say there, its political and military reach is far too limited to threaten US dominance. Oil tankers travelling to China through the Gulf will continue to rely on the US security umbrella, said Leverett.

''There's no way China can project that kind of military power so far away,'' he said.

After Saudi Arabia, Hu will visit Morocco, Kenya, and Nigeria -- another potential oil supplier.

REUTERS