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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (9601)	3/6/2004 9:03:35 PM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

On the subject of strategic reserves, China is the big story, and would be highly vulnerable to a major disruption, especially now: CHINA NPC - China to build more power stations, oil reserves BEIJING, Mar 06, 2004 (AFX-ASIA via COMTEX) -- China plans to start construction this year on power plants that will eventually add 40 mln kilowatts (kW) of generating capacity, while 37 mln kW of new capacity will come online in 2004 to ease the country's growing electricity shortage, National Developing and Reform Commission (NDRC) head Ma Kai said. The government will also speed up the building of a strategic national oil reserve and pay more attention to developing transport networks linking China's energy producers and consumers to ease bottlenecks in the power industry, Ma, head of the agency that overseas industrial policy, told delegates at the National People's Congress. "Considerable disparity remains between supply and demand in coal, electricity, oil and transport capacity, and the shortages of resources are increasingly affecting development," he said. The government has identified the brewing energy crisis as a key constraint to development as booming economic growth and price disagreements between coal producers and power generating companies have caused bottlenecking in the state grid. At the end of last month, an NDRC spokesman said that the new plant projects to be approved this year represented a 29 pct increase over the greenlighting last year of 31.11 mln kW, while the capacity due to come on stream this year is up from 30 mln kW in 2003, and compares with 44.7 mln kW for 2001 and 2002 combi ned. China's electricity consumption rose 15.4 pct last year to a record 1.89 trln kW, but although power generation output rose 15.3 pct, the highest since China's economic reforms started more than 20 years ago, supply is still lagging demand. Some 21 of the country's 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have been suffering electricity blackouts and although demand is forecast to moderate to 11 pct this year, shortages will continue, the NDRC said at the time. China is believed to have only a few days of oil reserves and the the government has over the past year been debating the setting up of a strategic oil reserve. Although there have been no official statements about the size of the reserves and where depots will be located, state media have variously said the government plans to build up a reserve of between 30 and 90 days. It is believed to have already chosen four sites on the east and northeast coast as the first bases to store 10 mln tons of crude as part of the first stage of the reserve to cushion the country from any disruption in oil supplies.