This book tells the story of how, following the departure of Chevron and some Western oil companies from Sudan, the entry of Asian National Oil Companies – Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Videsh (OVL) of India and Petronas (Malaysia) – ushered an unprecedented oil boom in Sudan. It provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which politics, personalities and non-state actors in Sudan impacted upon and shaped the actions and fortunes of oil multinationals and Asian national oil companies in Sudan, one of Africa's more recent oil-producing states with a legacy of political instability and internal conflict.

Apart from laying bare how long-running conflict served as the context for different outcomes, the author brilliantly illustrates how Chevron's loss became CNPC's and OVL's gain and ushered Sudan into an age of petro-prosperity. The book fully explores the context of Chevron's entry and withdrawal from Sudan under immense pressure from civil society at home, the context and response of Sudan's government to its withdrawal, and how the gap left by its departure provided an opportunity for Asian national oil companies, latecomers to the global competition for oil who built upon the initial exploratory work by western oil corporations to turn Sudan to an oil-producing and exporting country.

Unlike western oil corporations, Asian national oil companies were not subject to the same pressures. Luke Patey takes the reader through the complex relationships, histories and informal networks that mediate relations between oil companies and the state. The book provides an unprecedented in-depth analysis of the intimate, yet dense wiring of the interconnections between Asian states and (their) national oil companies, while also providing comparative insights into oil company-state relations in China and India. The book cautions against the assumptions of a ‘directive’ relationship between the state and oil companies in China and India, arguing that Asian national oil companies operate like regular profit-seeking enterprises, possessing and using a mix of autonomy and the revolving door relationship between positions in the government and the oil sector to maximum advantage. The author also explores the full ramifications of the competition between Chinese and Indian national oil companies over Sudan's oil resources, making cogent arguments against any over-simplification of their behaviour.

The book also shows how Sudan's leaders, far from being pliant puppets of Asian national oil companies and their home countries, have the capacity to resist overtures or pressures from Asia's emerging powers. It also demonstrates how both the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and South Sudan's independence in 2011 altered the political context of the oil business in the two Sudans. This continues to have adverse implications in the form of growing conflict over competing claims between Sudan and South Sudan over oil, tensions within South Sudan, and declining relations between Asian national oil companies and both countries in the context of shrinking oil production and profits.

The New Kings of Crude is an authoritative narrative of the role of Chinese and Indian oil companies in the ‘new’ global scramble for oil in Africa, drawing on the case of Sudan and South Sudan. It is well-researched, comprehensive and compelling, providing the most detailed analysis of the oil-conflict nexus, and the scope and limits of oil diplomacy involving Asia's emerging powers and both countries. The book is not, however, without a few pitfalls. This relates to the unevenness in the analysis between the cases of China and India on the one hand, and Malaysia on the other and relatively few comparative insights from other African oil-endowed states where the Asian oil giants operate. However, the book opens up a fresh perspective on the new global scramble for Africa's oil by showing that, though Chinese inroads into Africa's oil scene have yielded good dividends, success has come at a relatively high price and remains an unfinished business subject to progress or regression. With both China and India learning more about oil and Africa, and increasingly showing that oil business is ultimately about profit and power, this book is an important addition to the literature, and will hopefully open up the debate on the less-known, but by no means less-important aspects of the complex dimensions of the global struggle for Africa's oil.