EPIC - The energy depletion consequences are game changing.
1994, the International Energy Agency released a statistic that attracted little attention but years later would transform oil markets and the global economy. China, the west’s energy watchdog said at the time, had just become “a net importer of oil on an annual basis for the first time since the 1960s”.
The consequences became obvious as China’s voracious energy needs propelled the country towards its current ranking as the world’s second-largest oil importer, behind only the US – in the process pushing crude prices to a record high of nearly $150 a barrel in 2008. Beijing, which in 1993 imported a mere 30,000 barrels a day, about as much as Ireland does now, is these days buying 5m barrels a day – or the combined production of Kuwait and Venezuela.
Now it is the turn of coal. Last year, China became a net importer of coal on an annual basis for the first time since reliable records have existed. Including both thermal coal, used to fire power plants, and coking coal, used for steelmaking, Beijing bought 104m tonnes of the commodity, compared with net exports of as much as 80m tonnes in 2003.
....The mining industry has being awaiting this new “China moment” to profit from a rise in prices. In interviews, mining executives, consultants, analysts and traders say China will need to buy significant amounts of coking coal from overseas from now on and probably also thermal coal.
...demand there was likely to overwhelm indigenous supplies. “We have been waiting for this moment to happen,” he says. “While we are not sure that 2010 will be an exact repeat of 2009, we do expect the trend towards imports in this product to continue.”
IEA’s latest annual World Energy Outlook puts it: “China is expected to remain a dominant influence on the world coal market as it swings from being a net coal exporter into a net importer.”
Not only has the agency this time recognised the significance of the “China moment”; it also adds that China and India, which in 1980 consumed just one-fifth of the world’s coal output and now take about half, will be devouring two-thirds of it by 2030.