Asia as a new demand center

There have been two central points so far. They will be enormous amount of incremental energy demand in the future. And second, most of these additional energy consumption will be coming from Asia. According to international agency, global energy demand is scheduled to rise by 45% between 2006 and 2030. And emerging Asia will account for 2/3 of this demand of growth. One of the major assumption of this class I think is that this demand surge in Asia must be well managed. If you will, I want to use the term, good governance of Asia energy. This will be critical to global energy governance. Let’s take a close look at China’s internal oil and gas production.

China is producing both oil and gas internally, but the problem is recently due to rapid rise in consumption, China is relying more and more on foreign imports. China was self-sufficient about oil consumption up to 1997., Lately China’s natural gas consumption has been growing rapidly. China has become a net natural gas importer in 2007. Since then, energy has risen on the radar screen of China’s foreign policy. How and where to secure both oil and gas began to become a key national security and strategic issues of China. China’s demand surge, if not well managed, could pose a number of global risks and challenges. China’s immense incremental consumption of oil had pushed up global oil prices during 2000-2014.

Since July 2014, China’s economic slowdown has been slumping oil prices. What all this suggest I think is that ups and downs in the Chinese economy have become a key determinant of global oil and gas prices.