Correlation Study on Economy Growth and Petroleum Consumption-Taking US, China and Japan as examples

Abstract

Petroleum is the world’s most important primary energy. The global petroleum market fluctuation will threaten China’s energy security. China’s petroleum foreign dependency reached 67.4% in 2017. General speaking, quick petroleum price rising and high dependence on foreign petroleum are likely to have an adverse impact on the economy. However we will seek the truth by using data. The paper has analyzed the correlation between GDP growth of 3 countries (US, China and Japan) and 2 independent variables (international petroleum price rising and dependence on foreign petroleum) by using the econometric model. As for US, international petroleum price rising has no remarkable effect on GDP growth. The dependence on foreign petroleum is positively correlated with GDP growth: 0.14249. As for China, both international petroleum price rising and dependence on foreign petroleum have a negative correlation with the GDP growth: -0.02669 and -0.24123 respectively. As for Japan, both international petroleum price rising and dependence on foreign petroleum have no significant impact on its GDP growth. The conclusion illustrates that US and Japan have been well rewarded from their reasonable investment and exploration on the overseas petroleum resources.