China Oil Trade Deficit $30 Billion In ‘04, ‘Unbearable’ Official

Efforts to blame the spike in oil prices on growth in Chinese consumption are “unreasonable and untenable,” a Chinese oil official said Tuesday, warning against any effort to limit the growing country’s access to energy.

“To spread the ‘China threat’ and try to curb China’s progress and starve its energy needs is not in the interest of world stability and development,” Zhang Guobao, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in prepared remarks at a U.S.-China oil and gas conference in New Orleans. “Such attempts are doomed to fail.”

The NDRC is an agency of China’s State Council charged with developing national economic strategies. China had an oil trade deficit of more than $30 billion last year, a level Zhang called “unbearable.”
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