President Barack Obama's campaign is skewering Mitt Romney for his overseas investments, including in Cnooc, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, but the White House previously touting an American firm's ties to the company as a sign of progress.
From the Obama campaign press release:
Romney invested in Cnooc, the Chinese state-owned oil company: One of the many shocking revelations in Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax return was that he invested more than $75,000 in shares of Cnooc Limited, the Chinese state-owned oil company. It wasn’t until Romney decided that he was going to start talking tough on China in the context of his presidential campaign that he dumped the shares.
But last year the White House cited the ties between the company and an Ohio energy firm as benefiting the development of Carbon Capture and Storage in both countries.
AEP – State Grid Corporation of China: American Electric Power Company, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, signed cooperation agreements with three Chinese entities, China Huaneng, State Grid Corporation of China and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. The cooperation agreement with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the largest offshore oil exploration and production company in China, contains CNOOC investment in the AEP's Mountaineer Plant commercial-scale carbon capture and underground storage project, and plans to explore opportunities for the utilization of captured carbon dioxide for enhanced oil and natural gas recovery in the United States. This is expected to benefit the development of CCS technology in the United States and China.