China’s dependence on crude oil imports has dropped for the first time in the past two decades in 2021, from 73.6% in 2020 to 72% in 2021. Total crude imports declined last year to 513 million metric tons, down 5.3% year-on-year – the first time it has fallen in the past 20 years, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) said. Analysts attribute the drop of crude imports and decreasing energy dependency to increasing efforts by domestic energy companies in local oil field exploration and exploitation in the past few years, which further enhanced domestic energy security. Fu Xiangsheng, Vice Chairman of CPCIF, said the country’s major oil companies, including China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), have ramped up exploration investment during the past few years with a number of oil and gas fields coming on-stream, which in turn contributed significantly to the country’s decreasing reliance on oil imports.
China has made tremendous progress in increasing domestic oil and gas production over the past few years, said Luo Zuoxian, head of intelligence and research at the Sinopec Economics and Development Research Institute. The oil majors’ mastery of oil and gas exploration technology has also been on the rise, which will inject momentum into reform of the country’s future oil and gas systems and mechanisms, Luo said. CNOOC, the country’s top off-shore oil and gas driller, said its planned capital expenditure for 2022 will be between CNY90 billion and CNY100 billion, with exploration, development, production and others to account for approximately 20%, 57%, 21% and 2%, respectively, of its total spending. It will introduce 13 new oil and gas fields this year, while it also plans to drill 227 offshore exploration wells and 132 onshore unconventional exploration wells.
The China Offshore Energy Report released by the CNOOC Energy Economics Institute, a think tank under CNOOC, said China is becoming more self-sufficient in energy supplies in recent years, with the energy self-sufficiency rate reaching more than 80% in 2021. China’s total energy production increased to 4.18 billion tons of standard coal last year, up 2.5% year-on-year, the China Daily reports.
