China gains ground in battle over Ghana's offshore oil

But Kosmos might not be in Ghana's seas for long. According to an unidentified source cited by the Wall Street Journal, the government has already signed a $4 billion contract to pair its Ghana National Oil Company with the CNOOC. To bring the news full circle, the China-Ghana team is looking for a third company to effectively operate the site, which the Journal reported could very well end up being…. Exxon Mobil.

In any other decade, the world’s largest oil company might have been an easy pick for the job of sinking multi-ton drills beneath the oil-flushed seabed. But this is the 2010s, the first decade of a post-America world, when the national oil companies of China, India, and Korea are prying open new side doors into the global game of swapping oil fields.

Western oil dominance fades

In 2002, Angola's government nixed a plan by Houston-based Shell Oil Company to sell shares of an oil field to India’s national driller, awarding the plot to a Chinese state firm, instead. Shortly thereafter, the government blocked a plan by Houston-based Marathon Oil Corporation to sell some of its own drilling rights in the oil-rich country. East African countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, and Somalia are all active in the search for crude as well.

African nations, it seems, are flexing more muscle during negotiations over oil rights, according to Alex Vines, an Africa analyst at London-based think tank Chatham House.

"What [the failed Kosmos-Exxon deal] really shows is African agency, the ability of a host country to decide better what it wants to do with its own resources," Mr. Vines said in a telephone interview.

And China is stepping up where US companies fall short.

“The days when you thought a Western [oil company] could call the shots are long gone," says Vines.

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