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China Needs More Oil
China still needs large amounts of oil imports as no major discoveries of oil or technical breakthroughs in the industry have been made, sources from the State Petroleum and Chemical Administration said Wednesday in Beijing.
The country's oil demand reached 200 million tons this year, and the figure will increase by four percent every year, industry officials predicted.
However, the oil output stood at 160 million tons last year, without big increases in the past few years.
Despite the fact that China has ranked fifth in the world in oil output for 13 years running, the country is also a big oil consumer. It shifted to an oil import-oriented country from an oil exporter in 1993.
The officials said that China's oil imports will probably account for 40 percent of the total oil consumption by the year 2010.
China has very rich oil and gas resources. By the end of last year, the country had found 20.3 billion tons of oil resources, but experts believe that the figure represents only 20 percent of the total.
Sources said that China is set to develop a number of large oil and gas fields to increase its annual oil and gas output up to 300 million tons by 2010. These oil and gas fields will be located in the Songliao Basin in the northeast, around the Bohai Sea, in the west and northwest.
Meanwhile, China will strengthen its cooperation with other countries in oil-gas development, so that it can obtain from abroad 50 million tons of oil and some 50 billion cu m of natural gas.
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