The US government should not approve a bid by China's state-owned CNOOC for the US assets of Canadian oil firm Nexen unless the merged company agrees to pay royalties on all oil drilled offshore, or spins off the assets, Representative Edward Markey has said.
"Giving valuable American resources away to wealthy multi-national corporations is wasteful, but giving valuable American resources away to a foreign government is far worse.
"It has the potential to directly undermine American economic and national security," said Mr Markey, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee.
Mr Markey made his comments in a letter to US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who chairs a panel that examines foreign investment in US assets.
