In 2005 CNOOC, a Chinese oil firm, withdrew a bid for Unocal, a Californian producer, after American politicians kicked up a stink.
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Yergin says Americans are just now waking up to China's growing appetite for oil, as illustrated by the Chinese company CNOOC's aborted bid for Unocal.
But as recent events with CNOOC's bid for Unocal and Haier's bid for appliance giant Maytag have shown, it's not always easy to break into the Western market.
Barry Lane, a spokesman for Unocal, although cagey about the details of the settlement, still maintains that the firm did nothing wrong and is not reconsidering its investment in Myanmar.
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He criticised the approach for a failure to observe business etiquette and told Mr Mittal to look closely at a bid by China's CNOOC for Unocal, an American oil firm, which was scuppered by the hostile reaction of America's government and public.
There's the recent unsuccessful bid by a Chinese oil company for the US company Unocal.
Or when China's CNOOC oil company put up a bid for the American oil firm Unocal a year earlier?
Last September a federal court ruled Unocal could be liable for abuses if it "aided and abetted" them.
Bulgheroni outsmarted Unocal, which was competing for the bid and sued Bridas, but the company, led by Chairman Alejandro Bulgheroni, won in the courtroom.
Bridas sued the California oil giant for stealing its idea. (Bridas lost.) Unocal mixed it up with tyrants, too, flying a delegation of Taliban officials to its engineering headquarters in Houston, with a side trip to the NASA Space Center.
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