China Repeats U.S. Energy Policy Mistakes

China appears headed to duplicate America’s love affair with the gasoline powered automobile and its addiction to foreign oil. For a country with 1.3 billion people (1 billion more than the U.S.) the worldwide impact of Chinese automobile use is not hard to predict: Chinese oil imports will continue to surge and oil supplies around the world will tighten in the very near future.

However, surely the Chinese must realize American economic, environmental, and national security vulnerabilities to foreign oil addiction. Why would they set the stage in China to repeat glaring U.S. energy policy mistakes? What is China doing to combat foreign oil addiction? In particular, what is the status of natural gas transportation and policy in China?

It looks like the Chinese government is supportive of natural gas transportation, but China’s big problem is lack of natural gas infrastructure. That is, the lack of pipelines to distribute natural gas to and throughout its populous eastern cities. The U.S. on the other hand has the most distributed natural gas pipeline grid of any country on Earth: its 2.2 million miles of pipe connecting every major metropolitan city and 60,000,000 American homes.

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