Sudan is...a significant oil producer and this has put China and the United States at odds over how to handle Sudan...The UN Security Council recently adopted a resolution threatening possible sanctions against Sudan [but]...only after the US agreed, at China's insistence, to soften language that explicitly threatened sanctions against the country's oil industry...The major foreign oil players in Sudan are the China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC, and its state-controlled counterparts from India and Malaysia, ONGC Videsh and Petronas.