China to miss target for using natural gas

China will miss a target for increased natural gas use because importers failed to secure enough supplies and energy demand gained more than expected.

Gas will account for 5.3 percent of the nation’s energy needs by 2010, the country’s top economic planning body said in its latest five-year energy plan. That’s less than the 8 percent targeted since at least 1999. In 2005, gas made up 2.8 percent of the total.
China Petrochemical halted plans to build a liquefied natural gas receiving terminal after it could not find a supplier. The company ended talks to buy the gas from Iran, saying the asking price was too high. China is forced to rely increasingly on oil imports and has curbed exports of coal, its largest fuel source, to meet demand in the fastest-growing major economy.

“We are seeing difficulties in importing gas,” Zhou Fengqi, senior adviser at the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planner, said by telephone from Beijing on April 12.

China’s economy has more than doubled in size since the end of 2000. Growth for each of the past four years was more than 10 percent and last year’s 10.7 percent expansion was the biggest since 1995.

In 2002, China estimated energy demand would reach the equivalent of 2.16 billion tons of standard coal by 2010. That was exceeded as early as 2005, when demand reached 2.25 billion tons, Zhou said. The revised 2010 demand estimate is 2.7 billion tons.

International Herald Tribune