I take it you work for Unocal? What I would do is manipualte the reserve #'s in an attempt to get them to sell off assets to Devon, Apache, or Anadarko at a good price. Then write a book about it.
No, I don't work at a place getting acquired (or courted). I've got no dog in this hunt. Although, having been involved, very deeply, in a number of mergers and acquisitions, the recent news got me to thinking about this. My previous experience has been on both the buying and selling end of these sorts of deals. But only with US based (with the exception of one Japanese) companies doing the buying. But with the PRC, I think things would be bizarre, in any such deal...