by Peter Enav

25-08-05 China’s growing thirst for oil will place a greater strain on the world’s top supplier, Saudi Arabia, at the very time doubts are being raised about the kingdom’s ability to substantially increase production.
Should output falter in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East nations, some analysts warn of growing tension -- or even conflicts -- over access to diminishing resources between China and the world’s biggest oil importers, the United States and Japan, unless alternative sources of energy are found.

With its economy booming, China is striving to meet its enormous energy needs by intensifying its ties to major energy producing countries and seeking to buy a wide array of foreign oil and natural gas assets. A unit of China’s biggest state-owned oil firm, China National Petroleum Corp., announced that it reached an agreement to buy a major oil producer in neighbouring Kazakhstan for $ 4.2 bn.
Beijing’s strategy was dealt a blow earlier this month, however, when state-controlled CNOOC Ltd. abandoned its $ 18.5 bn bid to acquire California-based Unocal, citing enormous opposition to the deal in Washington.

But even if China were to double in the next five years the foreign energy reserves it acquires for its own domestic use, it would meet only a fraction of its expanding oil appetite, experts who follow China’s oil industry say.
"China will never be able to satisfy its oil demand through foreign acquisitions," says Gavin Thompson of the Beijing office of British oil consultants Wood Mackenzie. "They are now getting 55-60 % of their oil imports from the Middle East. In the future that proportion will only increase, because the Middle East is where the oil is."

Chinese oil experts say the country will remain heavily dependent on Middle Eastern crude.
"It is an unarguable fact that China’s dependence on Middle East oil is increasing," said a recent report from the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "And this reliance will continue. Henceforth the Middle East will be the most important supply source of international oil for China."

Out of China’s total oil consumption last year of 6.7 mm bpd, almost half came from imports, according to BP statistics. Chinese customs figures show Saudi Arabia provided 16 % of China’s import needs, with Oman and Iran contributing another 24 % between them.
Less than 10 % of its imports -- about 300,000 bpd -- came from foreign oil properties controlled by Chinese firms, said Wu Kang, a fellow at the University of Hawaii’s East-West Centre in Honolulu, citing Chinese statistics. And as China’s economy expands, Wu estimates that its import demands will swell to 5 mm bpd by 2010.

Saudi Arabia is probably the only country that can meet those demands, Wu says -- at least for the next several years. "But in the long term, there is a big problem," he said.
Adrian Loh, an analyst with Merrill Lynch in Singapore, believes the situation will deteriorate even sooner. He predicts China’s oil import needsin 2010 will grow to at least 10 mm bpd -- twice Wu’s projection and an amount that would leave it struggling to find Persian Gulf suppliers.
"We believe that more than 50 % of China’s oil imports in five years will have to come from Saudi Arabia," Loh said. "The problem is, I’m not sure they’ll be able to deliver them."

In recent months, influential oil analysts have begun to question Saudi Arabia’s petroleum potential. They cite the refusal of state-run oil company Saudi Aramco to provide reliable data about the performance of its fields and the methodology underlying its doubling of the kingdom’s estimated oil reserves in 1988.
Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons, author of the recently published "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," has emerged as a leading critic of the Saudi oil claims. He argues that Saudi Arabia’s best oil fields are aging rapidly and warns that the giant Ghawar field, which produces half the kingdom’s output, could collapse in coming years because of mounting structural problems -- with devastating consequences for global energy markets.

Questions about Saudi oil output, China’s growing demand, plus the wild card of terrorism are the recipe for "a perfect storm" that could spark future conflicts over access to oil, says Gal Luft, executive director of Washington’s Institute for Analysis of Global Security, a conservative think tank that advocates reducing America’s demand on foreign oil sources.
Recent tensions between China and United States over trade, oil acquisitions and China’s military build-up, as well as friction between China and Japan over conflicting claims to energy resources in the East China Sea and historical memories about World War II, have already created a delicate atmosphere, Luft says.
"In an environment of tension like this small incidents can spin out of control and lead to military confrontation," Luft says. "It doesn’t necessarily mean war, but in all of this energy will be the main sticking point. It’s far more important than any other issue."

Analysts said state-owned CNPC International’s acquisition of PetroKazakhstan was partly influenced by China’s desire to cement ties with Central Asia, reflecting its unease at the presence of US forces in the former Soviet region that borders Afghanistan.
Chinese leaders "want to stick their flag in the ground and become a more important player in different countries," said Paul Sampson, senior correspondent for London-based Energy Intelligence Group.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based consultancy, paints a much more optimistic scenario in regard to oil supplies. In a June report, CERA said it believed that between now and 2010 there will be a substantial increase in worldwide oil production capacity, providing a supply cushion of 6 mm to 7.5 mm bpd that could cause oil prices to "slip well below $ 40 a barrel as 2007-08 nears."
The current supply cushion is about 1.5 mm bpd -- less than 2 % of daily demand -- and concerns about output disruptions are a key reason behind the recent surge in oil prices.

For their part, the Saudis say they have enough oil to meet global demand for now and would raise production if prices rose too high. Current Saudi oil production is about 9.5 mm bpd -- about 11 % of the world total. Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and other Saudi officials say the kingdom can ratchet up production to as high as 15 mm bpd by 2015.
"I stand here to tell you that Saudi Arabian reserves are plentiful," al-Naimi said in a Washington speech in May. "And we stand ready to raise output as the market dictates."