Oilman John Paul Getty's quip that “the meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights” clearly translates well into Mandarin. While China's outsized thirst for global energy resources is nothing new, it had largely trolled waters off limits to US supermajors since China National Offshore Oil Corporation was rebuffed in a politically charged bid for Unocal in 2005 in favour of Chevron. The recession appears to have changed that.

The latest flashpoint is in Ghana, where ExxonMobil signed a $4bn deal to buy a stake in a massive offshore field. CNOOC may try to top the bid and, while Exxon is no weakling, it cannot compete with a buyer that is implicitly backed by $2,000bn in foreign reserves. More importantly, Exxon will not compete on the basis of geopolitical concerns, only financial return. The same goes for an even more audacious Chinese plan, worth up to 10 times as much, to buy minority stakes in several offshore blocks in Nigeria.

Tallying Chinese oil reserves must go well beyond the books of its already large oil companies. More than $40bn in loans to Brazil, Russia and Venezuela in exchange for future supplies, direct state purchases of other producers and pledges of infrastructure to countries such as Angola give China a claim to billions of barrels of future production. Add to that huge sums spent or pledged in pariah states such as Iran and Sudan, where US companies cannot compete, and China's political edge in securing supplies is clear.