International Trade China: Coal, Oil and Gas

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Trade and Distribution, grade: 1,0, European School of Business Reutlingen (ESB), language: English, abstract: China's extremely fast growing economy has made the demand and supply of energy a crucial topic. Today, China is the largest consumer of primary energy and the third largest producer. In the years between 1978 and 2000, the Chinese economy grew by 9% while at the same time the energy demand only grew by 4%. This trend has been turned around in 2001, when growth was stable at 9%, but energy demand grew by 13% a year. While China demanded 10% of the world energy demand in 2001, supporting these demand by 96% of domestic production, in 2007 they already accounted for 15% of the worlds energy demand, making them dependent on imports for coal, oil and gas, due to domestic supply lower 90%. As a result of these movements in the domestic demand and production picture of primary energies, China will have to face growing dependencies on the international energy markets, to secure sufficient energy to industry and population. The purpose of this paper is to show the change of trade flows in China with a focus on the primary energy resource coal, oil and gas. The change of production, consumption,import and export of these as well as related topics as price and transportation will be identified.Illustrating government involvements and economic players will complete the research to offer a comprehensive picture. [...]