By Xinhua
Beijing : China’s oil consumption is estimated to go up by 63 percent in 2020 as compared to 2006 in the wake of fast economic growth, says a government think tank.
The country’s oil consumption would rise from 346.6 million tonnes in 2006 to 407 million tonnes in 2010 and 563 million tonnes in 2020, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences forecast in a new report.
Oil demand would grow by an annual average of 4.5 percent from 2007 to 2010 and an annual average of 3.3 percent from 2010 to 2020, it said.
Thanks to a booming car industry, petrol demand would go up 5.7 percent annually, kerosene demand would grow by 5 percent annually and diesel oil, by 4.2 percent, the study added.
Vehicle sales would continue to expand at double-digit rates this year to 10 million in the world’s second largest car market, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
China’s rising oil consumption has been mainly fuelled by “increased interrelations between its GDP and oil consumption and a fast growing transport industry”, the report said.
China became a net importer of oil during the 1990s, and now 47 percent of the country’s consumption relies on imports.
Its crude oil output was 186.7 million tonnes last year, up 1.6 percent from 2006, while imports surged 12.4 percent to 160 million tonnes.
The country’s oil producers planned to find 10 new oilfields with reserves of more than 100 million tonnes each by 2010 in an effort to boost domestic supply.
Last year saw China’s biggest oil field discovery in four decades, with reserves of up to 1 billion tonnes, in the northern Bohai Bay.