Interview With Fu Chengyu

Fu Chengyu, chief executive officer of CNOOC, is the driving force behind its controversial takeover bid for U.S. oil giant Unocal. A fluent English speaker with a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California (he's currently a few courses shy of an M.B.A.), Fu met with TIME recently in Beijing to explain why a merger should make sense to Unocal, Washington and his own shareholders.

TIME: Why is buying Unocal a good deal for CNOOC?
Fu: We are a value-driven company. We look at Unocal's assetsboth the reserves it has already discovered...