Rebirth of England

"Yes, I know that natural gas may surpass oil in importance in the energy sector in the future, but we predict that oil and gas prices will fall in the next few years, so we will suspend our participation in the acquisition of Eni East Africa shares this time..."

Barron said to Epeli Singleton, CEO of United Energy Group, on the phone:

"Not only the oil and gas blocks in East Africa, but we will also suspend the acquisition of other oil and gas blocks within three years. The oil and gas resources we currently have are enough for us to exploit..."

"But PetroChina is very interested in Eni East Africa shares..."

"Then tell them that we are willing to cooperate with them in oil and gas exploration and production, natural gas and LNG (liquefied natural gas) value chain, trade and logistics, refining and petrochemicals, but this time the acquisition of Eni East Africa shares does not conform to our strategy..."

What he talked about with Epeli was that PetroChina had contacted United Energy Group before, hoping that the two sides would cooperate to jointly acquire Eni East Africa, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italy's Eni Oil.

Previously, they had good cooperation with CNPC in the Colo offshore oil field and the exploitation of the oil and gas blocks in Southeast Asia by the United Energy Group. Based on this, the other party made such a cooperation request.

Eni Oil Company is the largest oil group in Italy. Its wholly-owned subsidiary Eni East Africa owns 70% of the deepwater Area 4 block in the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique. The area has up to 85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which exceeds Norway's existing total natural gas reserves.

However, Barron knows that in the next few years, global oil and gas prices will fall by more than half. In the original time and space, PetroChina bought 28.57% of the shares and obtained 20% of the interests in Area 4, which cost 4.21 billion US dollars...

Three years later, ExxonMobil bought 35.7% of Eni East Africa's shares from Eni Oil Company and obtained 25% of the interests in Area 4, but it only cost 2.8 billion US dollars.

It can be said that it is not a wise decision to buy Eni East Africa's shares now.

Of course, Barron couldn't directly persuade CNPC to give up its decision to buy Eni East Africa's shares - after all, it's not easy to convince the other party to say this now, and it's even more impossible to reveal his own judgment on future oil and gas prices.

And CNPC's choice to buy overseas oil and gas resources is not entirely for economic interests, but also for China to reduce its dependence on coal and meet its energy needs.

In January this year, severe smog weather broke out in Yanjing, China. Throughout January, the number of days with smog weather reached 25 days, and only 5 days were relatively clean.

At that time, the heavy smog forced citizens indoors, causing flight disruptions and affecting the health of millions of people - during this period, Yanjing's air pollution index once reached 40 times the safety index.

In order to cope with this crisis, China began to govern the environment. In terms of energy, it will reduce its dependence on and use of coal and increase the proportion of clean energy such as natural gas.

Having said that, at the current point in time, if Barron didn't know about the future oil and gas prices, then buying Eni East Africa's natural gas block resources would also be a reasonable decision.

Since the reserves of the natural gas field in Area 4 in Mozambique were announced, many international oil giants have extended olive branches of cooperation to Eni Group, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Gazprom in the United States, in addition to PetroChina.     Finally, among these cooperation intentions, Eni Oil Company chose PetroChina. The reason is that China and Mozambique have a friendly relationship. With the participation of PetroChina, Eni Oil Company can minimize the political risks of this project...

Secondly, they hope to deepen cooperation with China Petroleum Company, so that they can control the entire Asian natural gas product market in the future and win huge profits.

Of course, if United Energy Group is willing to cooperate with PetroChina to directly acquire Eni East Africa, as long as it can afford a satisfactory price, Eni Oil Company will not refuse.

After all, as a state-owned enterprise in Italy, given the current economic situation in Italy, they are happy to make enough profit from this sale. In terms of oil and gas resources, Eni Oil Company is not short of them. In addition to Mozambique in East Africa, as an old oil company, Eni Oil Company also owns many oil and gas blocks in Africa. For example, their oil and gas blocks in Egypt have very rich reserves.

Just as Barron said, their decision is not only to give up the purchase of Eni East Africa, but also to suspend the purchase of other oil and gas blocks in the next two or three years.

However, as a partner with good cooperation with PetroChina, although Barron cannot directly persuade the other party to buy shares of Eni East Africa, he has done his best.

In addition to rejecting this cooperation, which is a subtle reminder to the other party, the investment company controlled by Barron has also been continuously shorting global oil and gas prices. With their large amount of funds joining the shorting, well, at least the decline in global oil and gas prices should be smaller than in the original time and space...

...

"Yes, the decline of print media has become inevitable in recent years. Whether in the United States or Britain, the proportion of young people reading newspapers has dropped significantly. Print media has been regarded as "antiques". Traditional print media are either trying their best to transform to the Internet or finally stop publishing..."

Barron and Ivanta brought their children to the mansion on the top floor of the TP Building on Fifth Avenue to meet with her family. Unconsciously, they talked about the current situation of print media. Facing the sighing eyes of others, Barron said lightly:

"In the first half of last year, when the Financial Times of Britain announced that the number of digital subscribers exceeded the print version for the first time, the media regarded it as an unusual exception. In fact, this This unusual future will become the norm. The newspapers under the independent newspaper industry have already begun to transform to the Internet. The current online revenue has exceeded the paper version..."

"So the influence of Internet media will become greater and greater, surpassing paper media?"

Hearing his father's words, Ivanta smiled and said:

"Although there is still a slight gap now, the Internet has a greater influence on young people, but soon, within four years, as the generation accustomed to paper media has a higher acceptance of the Internet, especially mobile Internet, this trend will begin to accelerate."

Seeing Jianguo's thoughtful look, Barron understood. It seems that at this time, he has already planned what will happen four years later...