China’s Economic Upswing May Not Boost Oil Prices

The massive disparity between China’s enormous economy-driven energy needs and its minimal level of domestic oil and gas reserves meant that the country was the key driver of the 2000-2014 commodities ‘super-cycle’, characterised by consistently rising price trends for commodities. As late as 2017, China’s high rate of economic growth allowed it to overtake the US as the largest annual gross crude oil importer in the world, having become the world’s largest net importer of total petroleum and other liquid…