Chinese Reserves

As China’s population grows exponentially in the new millennia, the energy needs of the country grow as well. With an enormous population of 1.3 billion people, the People’s Republic is the world’s most populous country and the second largest petroleum consumer behind the United States. Chinese oil consumption has seen rapid growth as society has made a change, moving away from bicycles and towards gasoline powered vehicles with automobile ownership growing 19% a year since 1990. As China looks towards the future, the country hopes to minimize its dependence on foreign oil reserves, predominately Middle Eastern reserves, concentrating on using the enormous reserves of natural gas found within their country’s borders and diversifying their imports among several natural gas producing countries.

In 2006, Chinese natural gas reserves ranked 15th in the entire world with proven deposits of over 2.27 trillion cubic meters. With deposits and yields projected to continue growing over the next 15 years or more, the Chinese government is doing their very best to encourage more exploration and extraction to help exploit these rich deposits and keep up with their country’s rapidly increasing energy needs. The use of liquefied natural gas for China would provide a boon to its natural gas refining operations while helping to minimize pollution within the country as a whole. Projections show that by 2030, China will have more automobiles on their roads than the United States. China already holds the position of the world’s largest coal burning polluter; with so many cars, their environment would doubtlessly suffer greatly and increase already growing rates of respiratory disease cases.

As China encourages development of natural gas industry at home, it has also increased its imports of the fuel from abroad, signing long term contracts with foreign natural gas producers such as Australia, committing to buy 4 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas a year from Australian companies Woodside Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell. The effects of Chinese natural gas consumption upon the liquefied natural gas production industry on a global scale cannot be understated. The United States and other natural gas rich nations would much enjoy greater and more amenable relations with China as the nation’s need for imports of fuel grow.

Oil and natural gas exploration companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corp would be greatly satisfied to count the People’s Republic of China as one of its many customers. Energy companies in all nations are ramping up exploration and production efforts in hopes of acquiring new contracts with this petroleum product consuming giant of the East.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com