China secures Syrian oil assets

China National Petroleum Corp. and India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp. have agreed to buy Petro-Canada's Syrian assets for about US$574 million as part of an effort to access dwindling oil and gas reserves, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, growth in China's oil consumption has led OPEC to revise upwards its forecast for oil demand for 2006 to 28.7 million barrels per day, up 134,000 barrels per day from 2005. , China now consumes more than 20 percent of the world's total oil production. State media also reported a second natural gas pipeline is planned to link deposits in the west to the energy-guzzling Guangdong Province in the south. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2020.