China's goal is not "to overturn the world order...but to participate in this order...and profit from it," Fu Chengyu, chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-based CNOOC Ltd. told attendees at the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston last month. The company was rebuked last year in its bid against Chevron Corp. for fellow U.S.-based producer Unocal Inc., while E&P professionals and Congressmen balked at the possibility of a China-based company owning a large amount of U.S. oil and gas reserves. Chengyu said at the CERA conference that he was receiving a warm welcome in Houston from the international oil industry, "a welcome perhaps somewhat warmer than in the recent past." He did not talk about the failed bid for Unocal, however. "CNOOC's views on these matters are well-documented, and anyway, that was last year, and last year is behind us. We are focused on the future...." Energy demand is changing in China as it is a changing country, he said. China's gross domestic product has grown an average of 9% a year during the past 10 years. "China is now a visible part of the global supply chain...Our economies are already interconnected (with yours) and so is our energy security," he told the multinational audience. Chengyu and his colleagues have transformed CNOOC, which had been a wholly state-owned oil company, into a transparent, global, publicly held firm during the past five years since its IPO. Upon initial trading in 2001, CNOOC's market capitalization was $6 billion; today it has reached $30 billion. Initially, potential investors in public shares of CNOOC devalued the paper, saying they would pay more if CNOOC's assets were in the U.S., for example. CNOOC needed to improve its financial transparency and China needed to make asset-protection assurances. "Our investors want the same performance from us as any international oil company," he said. Chengyu began his career in E&P in Chinese oil fields. At the time, China's international oil business consisted of selling oil to Japan. Today, it operates in six countries. "Of course, we have much more to accomplish," he added. CNOOC's current plans include bringing 10 development projects online this year offshore China; bringing China's first liquefied natural gas import terminal, in Guangdong province, online this year; expanding overseas; and moving into chemicals and refining, as well as alternative energy resources, such as the Canadian oil sands. He sees CNOOC's transformation as a natural evolution that reflects China's evolution. "We are bound together," he told other energy executives. "...Like you, we must replace our reserves aggressively,...achieve competitive scale." And, do this with greater sophistication, in a challenging staffing environment and during uncertainty of oil and gas markets. "Any single oil company cannot cure all the problems we face today; we have to work together." U.S. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-California) said in a press release that same week that China is pursuing energy deals "with countries around the world, including rogue regimes," according to a study by the CIA and other federal agencies. Pombo is arguing for an improved U.S. energy policy, or China will "march right over us in the upcoming decades," he said. "...We must take similar and aggressive steps to increase American supplies of renewable, alternative and conventional energy to grow our economy." House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) opposed China's takeover of Unocal. "Grumpy old 'Red China' is a rapidly industrializing nation run by contemporary communists who somehow learned to love profit, but still hate freedom," Barton said in the press release. "Nobody believed that if the Chinese owned Unocal, they wouldn't grab Unocal's oil and gas when the next energy crisis arrived."