"Our board wouldn't have backed away," Charles R Williamson, the former Unocal chief executive, said on Wednesday at a meeting sponsored by the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
Williamson also said he was "appalled" by some of the objections raised to the deal by US politicians who told him they were worried about the Chinese acquiring Unocal's "submarine detection technology" or its "deep drilling cavitation technology."
"I used to be the head of technology, and I never heard of this stuff,'' he said. In the end, CNOOC withdrew its offer, and Unocal went ahead with an earlier stock and cash deal to be acquired by US-based Chevron Corp for about $18 billion, which was lower than CNOOC's $18.4 billion offer.
Ultimately, it was a combination of uncertainty created by congressional opposition to the deal combined with bruised egos on the part of CNOOC that led to the collapse of talks between the two companies, Williamson said.
Unocal agreed to be acquired by Chevron in April, after CNOOC failed to submit a formal bid.
In June, when CNOOC finally made an all-cash offer that topped Chevron's bid, Unocal imposed a series of difficult conditions before agreeing to talk to CNOOC, which is 70 percent owned by the Chinese government.