Buffett Fooling Self on PetroChina's Darfur Ties

If westerners shun the stock, you would expect that to drive down the price -- or, at the very least, to leave the price lower than it would otherwise be.

Supply and demand.

And that will hit the top management of PetroChina-CNPC right where it hurts: In the wallet.

The reason?

Compensation for all the top people at PetroChina is heavily dependent on the stock price through "stock appreciation rights." Which means that compensation for a lot of the people running CNPC is heavily dependent on the PetroChina stock price.

In the case of Jiang Jiemin, the CNPC president and general manager, 60% of his annual PetroChina compensation is tied to the PetroChina stock price. For chairman Gen it's 70%. For all those PetroChina VPs involved in running CNPC, it's also 60%. Even for PetroChina's department heads it's 50%.

In total, as many as 300 top people at PetroChina get stock-appreciation rights every year. Put simply: The people running CNPC have leverage over the government of the Sudan. And western investors, through their influence on the PetroChina stock price, actually have some leverage over the people running CNPC.

Like I said, I'm usually skeptical of "divestment" campaigns. But this time around, it's pretty hard to argue with it.