PetroChina Will Out-Spend XOM This Year

Wall Street Cheat Sheet is reporting:

For the first time since the 1980s, Chinese oil company PetroChina is expected to outspend Exxon Mobil Corp., according to data collected by analysts at Barclay’s. 

Spending for oil companies worldwide is expected to skyrocket this year. Barclay’s estimated oil companies will spend $678 billion globally in 2013. That figure is up 10 percent from last year. Most of the money will be used for expanding international markets.

PetroChina is expected to spend $36.6 billion in the next year, coming out ahead of Exxon Mobil’s expected $33.9 billion. 

The companies’ actual spending will likely exceed the estimates, as Barclay’s only underestimated oil spending once. That mistake occurred in 2010 after the Deep Water Horizon accident that put a freeze on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

The two of you attended an elementary school in a suburb of Boston for the past several years.  I am told that one of Mitt Romney's children attended kindergarten at the same school, although I did not confirm that; it could simply be a rumor. The school has a lot of children of foreign parents who are visiting professors or students at Boston-area universities. There are a lot of Chinese, for example.

Your two closest friends, Kiki and Angie, are half-Chinese. Their Chinese maternal grandparents were both engineers and worked for PetroChina their entire lives. Upon graduation from her university in China, their mom was accepted to a prestigious university in Massachusetts, and ended up marrying a New Jersey native who is not a software programmer for a technology company. Their Chinese mother is in the same field of work, but working at a different company now. [She is now an American citizen; she says she paid into social security even when she was not yet an American citizen. Just a side note.]

Last night I had the opportunity to talk at length with the Chinese mother about growing up with parents who both worked for PetroChina. She, of course, did not understand the oil operations, or the engineering, but she shared a lot of insight regarding the culture and the experience of growing up in an "oil family" in China. Very, very fascinating.

I also got some basic questions about the Chinese language answered about which I have always been curious.