China not to pose threat to world energy security, official

Minister of the State Development and Reform Commission Ma Kai recently wrote an article to refute the allegation that China will pose a threat to the world’s energy security.

In his article published in the Economic Daily, Ma says that while relying mainly on its own resources to solve domestic energy problem, China will continue to import some energy resources from the world market. Based on the principles of equality, mutual benefit and mutual development, China will strengthen cooperation with other countries in energy production and consumption. China’s import of oil from the world market serves as an indispensable supplement to China’s energy demand and will not pose a threat to the world energy security.

He says that first of all, China has great potential for its energy supply. In the foreseeable future, coal remains the major energy resource in China, although its proportion in the country’s total energy supply will become less. China has rich coal resources. It is estimated that theoretically, China has more than 5 trillion tons of coal resources. China has over 1 trillion tons of ensured coal reserves and the amount of proved recoverable coal reserves reaches 114.5 billion tons, which will allow China to explore it for more than one hundred years. O oil reserves are also sufficient in China. According to the latest assessment report on Chinese conventional oil and gas resources, China has 21.2 billion tons of recoverable oil reserves in total and 2.5 billion tons of proved recoverable residual oil reserves. The average rate of proved oil reserves is 33%, still in the middle exploration stage. As technology advances, more oil reserves might be found. The natural gas exploration output is expected to grow fast. China has 22 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas resources. By the end of 2005, only 3.5 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas had been verified and the average rate of verification was only 15.9%, still in the early exploration stage.

The amount of unconventional oil and natural gas resources is fairly abundant in China. An assessment report about the coalbed methane resources done in 2005 shows that China has 37 trillion cubic meters of coalbed methane resources buried 2,000 meters below the earth surface, and the amount of recoverable coalbed methane resources reaches 11 trillion cubic meters. The storage of oil shale, oil sand, and asphalt, which are complementary oil substances to conventional oil reserves, are also abundant in China. Experts predict that a large amount of gas hydrate, which can be used as energy resources in future, exists in the East China Sea and South China Sea areas in China. In addition, China has large amount of hydropower, wind power, and solar energy.