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China’s quest for oil resources in offshore fields has so far proved seriously disappointing to authorities here who were banking on such discoveries to provide domestic energy for future industrial development. The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as a result has offered an additional 36,000 square miles of its coastal waters to foreign prospectors, and has reduced its terms for foreign exploitation of any oil found. So far, terms have been steep: The companies were obliged to pay all exploration costs and at least 49 per cent of development costs after oil had been found. The CNOOC is shortly to open an office in London to further its interests and contacts in Europe. It already has offices in Houston and Hong Kong. Two years of drilling in the South China Sea have produced almost no commercially viable results, even though forty companies were involved. The new offerings include drillings in the Pearl River Basin off Canton, long regarded as among the most favorable sites, and the prices for rights have come down. The Chinese had originally hoped for the discovery of a vast oil-bearing field off their shores comparable to fields in the Middle East. There are indeed oil-bearing rock formations to be found in Chinese waters, but there is definitely no very large field to discover. What oil is found there will be deeper down and consequently more expensive to exploit.

The cornerstone of the biggest mosque in Europe has finally been laid in a wooded tract on Monte Antenne on the outskirts of Rome. Designed to serve Italy’s 150,000 Moslems, forty thousand of whom live in the capital, the mosque will include an Islamic cultural center, a library, and a student dormitory. It will be surmounted by a large dome surrounded by 16 smaller ones; its minaret has been scaled down to a mere 75 feet in height out of deference to St. Peter’s and other monuments. The mosque has been a source of controversy—and not just over the height of its minaret—since it was first projected in 1978. It took the Roman Municipal Building Council 17 hours of fierce debate to approve the original plans. Then environmental groups objected on the grounds that it would spoil an undeveloped tract of land hitherto used as a park. The architects, both European and Islamic, battled so extensively among themselves that the situation at times threatened seriously to disturb Italy’s diplomatic relations with the Arab countries.

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China’s quest for oil resources in offshore fields has so far proved seriously disappointing to authorities here who were banking on such discoveries to provide domestic energy for future industrial development. The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as a result has offered an additional 36,000 square miles of its coastal waters to foreign prospectors, and has reduced its terms for foreign exploitation of any oil found. So far, terms have been steep: The companies were obliged to pay all exploration costs and at least 49 per cent of development costs after oil had been found. The CNOOC is shortly to open an office in London to further its interests and contacts in Europe. It already has offices in Houston and Hong Kong. Two years of drilling in the South China Sea have produced almost no commercially viable results, even though forty companies were involved. The new offerings include drillings in the Pearl River Basin off Canton, long regarded as among the most favorable sites, and the prices for rights have come down. The Chinese had originally hoped for the discovery of a vast oil-bearing field off their shores comparable to fields in the Middle East. There are indeed oil-bearing rock formations to be found in Chinese waters, but there is definitely no very large field to discover. What oil is found there will be deeper down and consequently more expensive to exploit.

The cornerstone of the biggest mosque in Europe has finally been laid in a wooded tract on Monte Antenne on the outskirts of Rome. Designed to serve Italy’s 150,000 Moslems, forty thousand of whom live in the capital, the mosque will include an Islamic cultural center, a library, and a student dormitory. It will be surmounted by a large dome surrounded by 16 smaller ones; its minaret has been scaled down to a mere 75 feet in height out of deference to St. Peter’s and other monuments. The mosque has been a source of controversy—and not just over the height of its minaret—since it was first projected in 1978. It took the Roman Municipal Building Council 17 hours of fierce debate to approve the original plans. Then environmental groups objected on the grounds that it would spoil an undeveloped tract of land hitherto used as a park. The architects, both European and Islamic, battled so extensively among themselves that the situation at times threatened seriously to disturb Italy’s diplomatic relations with the Arab countries.