China's soaring natural gas consumption surpasses its production

A short paper from an Oxford Institute for Energy Studies researcher looks at China's soaring demand for natural gas and ways it could meet growing import reliance.

Why it matters: China has become the world's largest gas importer as demand has greatly outpaced domestic production, as the chart above shows.

• Import reliance reached 43% last year, compared to just 5% a decade earlier (!), and LNG meets well over half of those import needs, notes OIES senior research fellow Stephen O'Sullivan.

The big picture: "While China has few short-term options to mitigate the strategic vulnerabilities associated with rising seaborne supplies, it may increasingly turn to Russia as a source of imported gas," he writes.

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