Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Salt'n'Peppa who wrote (143962)	1/21/2011 1:59:10 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206093

Energy rivals scramble to secure resources By Leslie Hook in Beijing Published: January 20 2011 18:17 \| Last updated: January 20 2011 18:17 Even after three decades of rapid economic growth, during which China became the world’s leading exporter and second-largest economy, the country imports only 10 per cent of its annual energy requirement. That is thanks primarily to vast domestic reserves of coal, which supply 70 per cent of its energy. The 10 per cent that China must import is, however, still the same amount of energy that is needed to power the UK, the world’s sixth-largest economy. Most of China’s energy imports are in the form of crude oil. Despite being the world’s fifth-largest oil producer after Iran, China trails only the US as a net importer of crude oil. China consumes so much energy not because it is the world’s most populous country – in per capita terms, its energy consumption is quite low – but because it is the workshop of the world. China accounts for one-third of global industrial energy demand, up from 13 per cent in 1990. The US, by contrast, has seen its share of global industrial energy use shrink from 16 per cent in 1990 to 13 per cent. While half of China’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East, Chinese companies have been expanding into countries that western oil companies tend to avoid, such as Sudan and Burma. The Chinese government is conscious of the fact that about three-quarters of its imported oil must transit the Strait of Malacca – and that it has no aircraft carriers compared with the US navy’s 11. To hedge its exposure to this strategic choke point, China is building oil and gas pipelines across Burma to the Indian Ocean, to central Asia and to Siberia. For now, the pattern of China’s overseas oil dependency is complementary to that of the US. China is much more reliant on the Middle East and Africa, while the US sources more from its north and Latin American neighbours. That lessens the short-term prospects for direct competition between the world’s two largest economies for sources of crude oil. The US, after all, is not used to dealing with an economic and military rival. Its traditional economic peers, Japan and Germany, were defeated enemies turned allies and ultimately dependent on the US military to secure global shipping But barring any breakthroughs in environmental technologies, the two rivals could be heading for a collision. By some measures, China is already the world’s largest consumer of energy and accounts for half of the world’s growth in oil demand – even though its per capita energy use is less than one-third of that in the US. According to the International Energy Agency, per capita energy consumption in China could be above the global average by 2035. Should China ever come close to matching the US’s appetite for resources, the geostrategic equation would change dramatically. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.