China to consume 63% more oil in 2020 compared with 2006

Use of foreign investment in west China increases

The increase of actual use of foreign investment in China's western regions exceeded the nation's average by 128 percentage points in the first two months this year, said an official of the ministry of commerce.

During the first two months, the western regions' actual use of foreign investment was $1.393 billion, more than double over the same period of 2007. A total of 254 foreign companies were approved to invest in the region, said Ji Xiaofeng,a ministry official in charge of foreign investment management at the ongoing 12th Investment & Trade Forum for Cooperation between East and West China.

Ji attributed the increase to the nation's encouraging policy for foreign investment to the middle and western regions. She said the ministry was advocating a transfer of foreign investment from the eastern regions to the western areas and encouraging local governments to use the investment in an innovative way.

She said the ministry would continue improving regulations on foreign acquisition and merger and establish an anti-dumping investigation mechanism. Foreign investors would be welcome to participate in reforms of state-owned companies.

According to statistics available, a quarter of the nation's tax revenue came from foreign invested companies at present. By the end of February, the number of foreign invested companies accumulated to 637,000 nationwide and the amount of the actual use of foreign investment reached $781.1 billion.

During the first two months, 4,372 foreign investors came to China and the actual use of foreign investment rose 75% to $18.1 billion.

China's oil consumption would rise from 346.6 million tons in 2006 to 407 million tons in 2010 and 563 million tons in 2020, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences forecast in a new report.

Oil demand would grow by an annual average of 4.5% from 2007 to 2010 and an annual average of 3.3% from 2010 to 2020, it said.

The rise in refined oil demand would outpace total demand over the next 13 years, with gasoline demand up 5.7% annually, helped by a booming automotive industry. Kerosene demand would grow by 5% annually and diesel oil 4.2%.

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.

Refined oil would account for 54.1% of the total demand in 2010 and 59.5% in 2020, compared with 47.1% in 2006.

China's rising oil consumption was mainly fueled 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% of the country's consumption relies on imports.

China's crude oil output was 186.7 million tons last year, up 1.6% from 2006, while imports surged 12.4% to 160 million tons.

The country's oil producers planned to find 10 new oilfields with reserves of more than 100 million tons each by 2010 in an effort to boost domestic supply, the Ministry of Land and Resources said in a document on its website on April 3.

Last year saw China's biggest oil field discovery in four decades, with reserves of up to 1 billion tons, in the northern Bohai Bay. (Xinhua)