China Oil Trade And Oil Security

Petroleum, as an important strategic resource, plays a decisive role in the industry and economic development in the world. The resources shortage is essential to the development of China for it is during the period of industrialization. Along with the torrid economic growth, the demand for petroleum increases rapidly, however, the exploit and produce of domestic petroleum are much slower, which, makes the problem between supply and demand much more intensive. Hence, the petroleum trade occupies a unique place in the foreign trade of China, especially the import part. China must get safe and stable petroleum supply to sustain its rapid development in the globalization of world economy. As for the safety of petroleum supply, China plays a new important role in the world energy system and this concept just penetrates into the political, economical and diplomatic life in recent years, what's more, it will certainly go deeper with the more and more severe safety problem for petroleum supply situation. The rapid increase for petroleum demand and the slow progress in domestic petroleum exploit and supply contribute to the increasing of petroleum tension, which together with the growing petroleum import and external risk factors give birth to the problem of petroleum safety. On the year 1993, China became the net importer of petroleum, which means the end of China's self-sufficiency for petroleum. With the rapid increase for the demand of petroleum, China will import more petroleum and the petroleum safety problem will stand out gradually. When looking into the future, China will face severe petroleum safety situation. This article analyses the petroleum safety problem from the international trade aspect, and puts forward some strategies to solve the problem.This article can be divided into fours parts.The first part analyses the general situation of China's petroleum trade. By summarizing the process of China's petroleum trade, the article portrays a basic picture of the history for the petroleum trade, followed by the analyzing of characteristics of China's petroleum trade. This part also includes the following aspects, those are, the foreign trade structure and changes, import source, mode of foreign trade and transportation of petroleum trade. Besides offering the general information about the current situation of petroleum trade, this part provides the foundation for the petroleum safety problem.The second part mainly analyses the current situation of the world petroleum market and forecasts the future supply and demand. For the close tie between China's petroleum safety and the world petroleum market, a better understanding of the global trend will provide the basis to emphasize the China's petroleum safety problem. After stating the current situation, this part forecasts supply and demand of the medium-term petroleum market. The third part analyses the supply and demand of China's petroleum and puts forward the problem of petroleum safety. After offering a general understanding of the world petroleum market and the supply and demand of China's petroleum, this part proposes the urgency of understanding the petroleum safety problem. Based on the analyzing the current supply and demand situation of China's petroleum, this part analyzing the supply and demand situation in the future and reaching the conclusion that the difference between the supply and demand for the petroleum in China will be greater in the future and China will depend more on import. That is to say, China need to pay more attention to the petroleum safety problem consisting of four aspects, the intensive relation between supply and demand, the sole origin of import, the curb from super countries and the weak ability to withstand the petroleum risks.The forth part proposes the foreign trade strategies to safeguard the petroleum safety based on the analyzing of the world and China's petroleum market. Those strategies are comprised of varying the source of import, mode of trade, mode of transportation and completing the petroleum strategicstorage. Concerning the variation of the source of import, this part mainlyanalyzing the strategies China should take when doing the petroleum tradewith the Middle East, Africa and Russia.