Buffett Fooling Self on PetroChina's Darfur Ties

I'm not usually a big fan of "divest from..." campaigns. Most of the time, they're as much about feeling good in the West as they are about actually doing good in the Third World.

And they usually rest on dubious economics. If you "divest" from a company involved in something bad, you just sell your shares to someone else, who then collects the profits. The company's activities, and the profits themselves, need not be affected.

But in the case of PetroChinaPTR and the Sudan, the campaigners have a point. And Warren Buffett's defense of his large stake in the PetroChina -- that it has no role in the African nation -- has a big hole in it.

In case you missed it, the Chinese oil company PetroChina is the target of a divestment campaign related to the slaughter currently under way in the Darfur region of Sudan. More than 200,000 people have been murdered there, hundreds of thousands more made homeless, and rape and torture are daily acts of war. The government of the Sudan is, at best, complicit and is at worst directly responsible.

This is a modern holocaust.

Campaigners argue that PetroChina effectively has blood on its hands and that anyone who holds shares in the company, either directly or through a mutual fund, is complicit. (PetroChina is listed in New York and Hong Kong.)

The reason? Its parent company, Chinese state oil company CNPC, is a key player in Sudan.