By Zhang Qin

March 20, 2018 - The 2017 China Energy Annual Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday showed that China’s crude oil output declined slightly over the past year and production of raw coal has shown a recovery, while natural gas production has reached a record high.

Affected by many factors such as changes in the international crude oil market and domestic oil production and production conditions, China’s crude oil production declined last year. According to statistics, China's crude oil output was 191.51 million tons last year, a decrease of 4.1% from the previous year, and the decrease was 2.8 percentage points lower than the previous year. This is also the second consecutive year of decline in China’s crude oil production since last year, but the decline of 4.1% last year has been reduced by 6.9% from the previous year.

At the same time, China's crude oil processing capacity continues to increase, so China's crude oil imports increased significantly last year, breaking the 400 million tons mark. This also led to an ever-expanding ratio of China’s crude oil imports to domestic production, expanding from 1.3:1 in 2012 to 2.2:1 last year.

Affected by related policies such as “coal to gas conversion”, domestic natural gas consumption demand was strong last year, driving the rapid growth of natural gas production. Data show that last year China's natural gas production was 148.03 billion cubic meters, an increase of 8.2% over the previous year, and the growth rate was significantly accelerated by 6.5 percentage points. Since 2012, China's natural gas production has increased by an average of 6% annually. At the same time, China’s natural gas imports have also continued to grow rapidly. Last year’s natural gas imports reached 94.63 billion cubic meters, a substantial increase of 26.9% from the previous year. This also increased the ratio of China's natural gas imports to domestic production from 0.4:1 in 2012 to 0.6:1.

China's raw coal production once fell to the lowest point since 2010 due to the dual impact of the “de-capacity” policy and slowing demand; however, with the steady national economy last year, China’s coal demand is picking up, raw coal production Recovering growth. According to statistics, China's raw coal output last year was 3.52 billion tons, an increase of 3.3% over the previous year, and was the first positive increase since 2014. 

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