Sunset for a Deal

On August 4, the entire board of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), the Chinese oil company that had tried to make history by buying Unocal, the eighth-largest oil company in the U.S., gathered at its Beijing headquarters for a postmortem. Thirty-six hours earlier, the company's CEO, Fu Chengyu, had made it official: after fencing with Chevron, the U.S.-based "super major'' oil company, for the right to buy Unocal and its extensive oil and gas assets in Asia, CNOOC was giving up the fight. The Chinese firm had been spooked both by political opposition in the U.S. Congress, and the steep...