China's oil production to peak in 2015. (forbes)

[Vaporous]

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - China's crude oil production will peak at about 190 mln tons by 2015, according to a report by the China News Service.

The report cited Pang Xiongqi, professor at the China University of Petroleum, who also said that the country's natural gas production would peak at 120 bln cubic meters by 2035.

China faces even more serious energy supply challenges once the peak has been passed, Pang said, and will be forced to spend more of its foreign currency reserves on increasingly expensive crude imports.

Dwindling oil production could also lead to a further increase in the consumption of coal, putting more pressure on the environment, Pang said.

A research report produced by the China Academy of Social Sciences in 2006 predicted that, on the basis of current consumption and production patterns, China's oil reserves would be exhausted by 2020.

China's biggest oil fields in the east, including Daqing in northeastern Heilongjiang province and the Shengli oilfield in eastern Shandong, are depleting, and the country's major producers are counting on new discoveries in the west and in offshore regions in order to replenish their reserves. They are also expecting technological breakthroughs in the fields of exploration and enhanced oil recovery.

New technologies could be employed to discover more oil reserves at existing production bases in Karamay in northwestern China's Xinjiang region and at the Liaohe oilfield in northeastern Liaoning province, the president and chief executive of PetroChina (nyse: PTR - news - people ), Jiang Jiemin said at the Seventeenth Communist Party Congress last month.

linky

Looking more wonderful every day.

Thoughts?

[Eris]

China faces even more serious energy supply challenges once the peak has been passed, Pang said, and will be forced to spend more of its foreign currency reserves on increasingly expensive crude imports.

It seems to me that given that the world is expected to peak before then, if it hasn't peaked already, that they're going to have to worry about spending more of its currency reserves far before then just to keep their imports steady, since as I recall they're not at all self sufficient. That was why they're scrambling securing foreign sources, isn't it?

[Androsphinx]

I thought that international estimates were for PO of all non-OPEC countries by 2010.