China’s Oil Industry and Policy

China’s Oil Situation and Oil Companies

China is one of the largest oil producers and oil consumers in the world. Over the past half a century, China has undertaken the route from a net oil exporter to a net oil importer and has also become the world’s largest energy consumer since 2010. China’s oil industry was started in 1959 with the discovery of the Daqing Oil Fields in Northeast China. Together with further discoveries of the Shengli Oil Fields (in Shandong Province) and Dagang Oil Fields (near Tianjin), China became self-sufficient in oil supplies in 1965 and soon developed into a net oil exporter for nearly three decades. In 1989, the Tarim Basin oil fields were uncovered in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China, making the country the tenth largest oil reserve nation in the world by the end of 1992 (BP 2003, p. 4). In the 1980s, China also discovered offshore oil fields in the Bohai Bay and the South China Sea, although the contribution of offshore oil...