China needs to build oil tanker fleet for security

As China becomes a large oil importer, experts say building the country’s own oil tanker fleet to ensure oil security in the future is an urgent task.

The fleet should be capable of handling at least 50 percent of China’s total oil imports, Friday’s Beijing-based Economic Information Daily quoted shipping industry experts as saying

Based on this estimation, the oil tanker fleet should be able to handle 75 million tons of the oil imports by the year 2010. The figure would rise to more than 130 million tons by 2020, the newspaper said.