In modern society, oil is as important to national development as blood is to human life. China, the world's second-largest economy, is known for its reputation as the "factory of the world", but at the same time, the demand for oil and energy in China's comprehensive industrial sector is becoming increasingly significant.
With the rapid development of China's economy, the demand for oil has also increased significantly. Up to now, China's dependence on foreign countries has exceeded 70, which can be described as "non-self-sufficient" in oil demand.
However, the Middle East, as the main source of oil today, is still under the control of the United States and its allies. Considering the current situation of fierce competition between China and the United States, China's future oil ** may face the risk of being encircled and cut off.
In the face of this challenge, the national leadership and academic circles have been thinking about how to extricate themselves from the predicament, and have gradually formed a number of ways to deal with it, such as "digging deeper", "opening up" and "substituting".
Fragile Petroleum Chains As the most critical chemical energy fuel, oil is indispensable in all industrial production.
With the rapid growth of China's economy, China has become a major oil consumer, with proven oil reserves of less than 4 billion tons, ranking only sixth in the world, but this is far from meeting China's development needs.
In recent years, more than 70% of China's oil consumption depends on foreign countries, and the annual oil import volume is about 500 million tons, which has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest oil importer.
More than 40% of China's oil imports come from the Middle East, and other countries such as Russia, Angola, and Venezuela also account for different proportions of China's oil imports.
Today's development in China is inseparable from oil, so the environmental safety of oil imports is naturally the focus of our attention. It is estimated that China's oil reserves are only enough to last for about three months.
Therefore, once a major change occurs in the international oil market, China may face an oil crisis at any time. When it comes to China's potential future oil crisis, the biggest potential problem is likely to come from the Middle East.
The Middle East is the world's largest oil-producing region, more than 60% of the world's oil is produced in the Middle East, as one of the key regions in the world, the Middle East is undoubtedly one of the regions that the United States is most concerned about.
Under the coercion and lure of the United States by force and money, most of the major oil countries led by Saudi Arabia in the Middle East maintain close alliance relations with the United States.
The reason is that the United States has the most powerful military force in the world, its navy is distributed in hundreds of military bases, and the Middle East, as the global energy center, has become a key station for the US team.
The United States has achieved control over Middle Eastern oil through its strong military force, and at the same time has cooperated with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, to establish a petrodollar settlement system that allows it to control oil sales to the greatest extent.
Under the circumstance of tense relations between China and the United States, if the United States makes demands on the oil-producing countries of the Middle East under the pretext of protecting the "interests of the dollar", these countries are likely to obey the wishes of the United States and reduce or even delay their efforts against China, posing a huge threat to China.
This is not alarmist, as Iraq attempted to "de-dollarize", only to be directly invaded by the United States, leading to the collapse of the regime. And the contradictions between Iran and the United States have been going on for more than 40 years.
Although ostensibly a struggle between religious and democratic countries, it is actually because Iran has cut off American oil interests. At the beginning of this year, the United States forcibly seized an Iranian oil tanker and sold more than $100 million worth of oil, which was a helpless move for Iran, which has stood firm.
The United States considers itself a global policeman, capable of robbing other countries of their oil resources, and even seizing and inspecting other countries' ships at will, which was also bullied when our national strength was weak. In the 90s, the United States forcibly inspected China's Yinhe freighter, and the Chinese diplomat at the time, Mr. Sha Zukang, repeatedly expressed his helplessness, highlighting the difficulty of weak countries to assert their rights and interests when their national strength was relatively weak.
Therefore, the United States, the most powerful country in the world, does have the ability to restrict China's access to oil, and the control of the United States and its allies over the transportation arteries where China imports oil is a serious problem.
Since oil is mainly imported by sea, it is inevitable that our country will have to cross the Strait of Malacca, and the countries along the way, including India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, are basically allies of the United States.
At the request of the United States, these countries will most likely agree to control the port shipping lanes, which would be equivalent to cutting off China's most important sea shipping lanes.
Recently, the United States has established a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with India, Japan, and Australia, and the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Vice Ministers have visited Japan, India, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other countries, almost circumnavigating the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
In addition, through negotiations, the United States can send ** and aircraft to control the shipping lanes at any time from naval bases in the Philippines and Singapore.
In addition, the United States has been carrying out so-called "freedom of navigation" in the South China Sea, and has even instigated Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and other countries to cross the ocean to the South China Sea for so-called freedom of navigation, which seriously threatens China's sea lanes for oil and energy transportation.
It can be said that China's current oil import security is facing an extremely grim situation, and if we fail to effectively solve the problem of excessive dependence on foreign countries, once a war breaks out, the consequences will be extremely serious and terrible, and we must seriously consider and take measures to solve it.
In order to ensure national energy security and ensure economic and social development, it has always been the primary issue facing the development of China's energy industry. At present, the traditional idea of energy security is mainly focused on ensuring oil and gas resources, which is achieved by increasing domestic exploration and development and international resource cooperation.
Under the new development pattern, we must strictly follow the country's new energy security strategic deployment, vigorously implement the "four revolutions, one cooperation", based on ourselves, facing the world, accelerate innovation, and adopt multi-faceted means.
One of them is to "dig deep" into domestic resources and unleash their own potential.
In the tense and complex external situation of Sino-US relations, we must focus on tapping potential. The development and utilization of domestic oil and gas resources will be regarded as the most basic focus to solve oil security problems, and the intensity of exploration, development and scientific and technological innovation will continue to be increased.
In addition to increasing the exploration and development of oil and gas resources on land, we can also more actively expand offshore resources, especially the South China Sea, which has rich oil resources, and we can focus on increasing the development and utilization of offshore oil and gas resources.
By using China's increasingly mature scientific and technological means and manufacturing capabilities, increasing the construction of offshore oil drilling platforms, it is definitely a feasible way to obtain resources from the ocean.
For China, a country with a huge economy, although the domestic oil and gas reserves and exploitation have increased, it is difficult to achieve the rapid improvement of oil development, and the transformation of the industrial structure will also take a long time. At present, it mainly relies on the redevelopment of old oilfields, and the reserves of newly discovered oilfields are mostly of unsatisfactory grade, and the cost of exploration and development is high, so the new oil and gas production during the 14th Five-Year Plan period may not be able to meet the growth demand.
The second path is to promote energy security by "expanding" international markets.
China's dependence on foreign oil and gas is still likely to continue to increase, and the international assessment organization has ** that by 2030, China's foreign dependence on oil may be as high as 80%, which is quite unsafe for China's oil energy security mechanism. Therefore, we need to continue to "go global" while tapping the potential at home, expand the diversified oil procurement system in the international market, and actively participate in cross-border energy cooperation.
At present, China has cooperated with Russia to successfully build the "Sino-Russian Pipeline", which can meet the demand of at least 15 million tons per year, which has built an energy channel in the north of China.
China is embarking on the development and construction of the Western Energy Corridor, which connects Kazakhstan's oil and gas pipelines, with an estimated annual oil transmission capacity of 20 million tons. In addition, the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline was completed six years ago and could solve the oil gap of 22 million tons per year.
The oil channel between China and Pakistan's Gwadar port is also under construction, and if it is successfully operated, it will help China's oil imports avoid the Strait of Malacca, avoid the impact of the unstable situation in the Persian Gulf, and add another layer of guarantee to China's oil and energy security.
With the help of the rapidly developing "Belt and Road" platform, China can guide state-owned and private enterprises to the international market, actively participate in the exploration and development of the world's oil and gas resources, and form a strong ability to compete in the international market and organize resources.
The third path is to enhance the oil emergency response capacity through "Guangji**".
At present, the fierce competition between globalization and anti-globalization forces, and the rise of isolationist and conservative forces, have made the role of strategic reserves of oil more prominent.
Although China's oil reserves started relatively late, it is currently in a favorable strategic reserve opportunity, because the international oil and gas ** has been relatively low in recent years.
At this favorable time, we can continue to increase oil imports and expand strategic oil reserves. We can speed up the construction of reserve bases around important coastal ports and petrochemical industry bases, promote the construction of energy infrastructure, and innovate oil and gas reserve models.
By mobilizing the participation of the whole people, we will mobilize private capital to participate in oil reserves, and jointly build a diversified reserve system that combines national reserves, commercial reserves and social reserves.
The fourth path is to adopt "more subtraction" to improve energy efficiency.
We can learn from the successful experience of foreign countries, put the improvement of energy efficiency in the first place of energy strategy and policy, and continuously optimize the energy structure.
With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, China's people's demand for energy is increasing, so it is necessary to balance between ensuring the quality of life of the people and the security of national energy use. We need to start with energy efficiency.
China has been promoting energy conservation and emission reduction, the first authorities should not only firmly walk on the road of energy conservation and emission reduction, but also vigorously promote energy-saving transformation in key areas such as new energy vehicles, and promote the improvement of all-round energy efficiency, so as to promote the adjustment of economic structure and industrial transformation and upgrading.
At the same time, we should actively promote green lifestyles and consumer culture to unleash the potential of energy efficiency.
The ultimate magic weapon is through new energy substitution.
This year, natural disasters such as high temperatures, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, and mudslides have occurred frequently around the world, and the United States, Germany, India, Canada, and China have all deeply felt the power of nature, and climate change has become an important issue of global concern.
U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry recently visited our country to discuss how to address climate change.
All of this is closely linked to current petroleum energy use and global CO2 emissions. While the world is concerned about climate change, if we want to continue to develop, we must base ourselves on the current reality, and at the same time open up a green energy path that supports a better life with lower energy intensity and cleaner energy.
First, we should actively and cautiously promote the "petroyuan" pricing system to reshape the global energy governance architecture. As a unique commodity, the global** market for oil is still dominated by the US dollar. In order to reduce dependence on the US dollar and reduce the risk of oil pricing, China has introduced RMB
At present, the RMB market is running smoothly and its market influence is constantly increasing, making China the world's third largest market. In the context of the gradual opening up of China's financial market and the increase in the transparency of the capital account, the RMB will usher in a historic development opportunity in the future.
In order to ensure that the process of China's economic and political status is not disturbed, promoting the realization of the "petroyuan" pricing right will help break through the "Asian premium" in the Middle East and further enhance China's ability to cope with the risk of international oil fluctuations.
Secondly, advocating "replacing oil with electricity" and developing new energy substitution will become the ultimate solution to solve China's energy security problems. We need to focus on the two major competitive areas of global energy resources and technological innovation in the future, get rid of China's long-term over-dependence on fossil energy, and promote electrification.
Practice shows that the trend of global terminal energy electrification is becoming more and more obvious in the future, so China's new energy security strategy regards electrification as a key breakthrough direction, and has made remarkable progress, and China has shifted from a power power country to a power power.
In the field of wind power and photovoltaic power generation, China has established a complete industrial chain, and is in a leading position in technology research and development, equipment manufacturing, construction and operation. In terms of new energy development, China has unique advantages, which will help to transform industrial advantages into economic, technological and green development advantages more quickly.
With the improvement of science and technology, we are expected to greatly increase the use of clean energy such as nuclear energy, geothermal energy, and hydrogen energy. As long as we continue to research and promote relevant application technologies, we will provide stable and strong support for our energy security.
In the face of the all-out encirclement of China by the United States, the future world situation is more uncertain, and China's energy industry needs to continue to move forward. Therefore, we must promote the revolution of energy production, establish a diversified system, so that coal, oil, gas, nuclear, new energy and renewable energy and other aspects drive each other, and provide stable and reliable energy support for the comprehensive construction of a moderately prosperous society and a modern country.