Present Situation and Development Tendency of China's Petroleum Market

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents an analysis and evaluation of the current situation and developmental trend of the petroleum market of China. The authors believed that the marketing deformation of petroleum industry and development of petroleum market of China is restricted by the change of whole economic system in China. This paper discussed the aspects of changes of Petroleum Market and predicted the developmental trend of China's petroleum market, which includes the relationship between supply and demand, price fluctuation and characteristics of petroleum source allocations, etc. Introduction Strictly speaking, the petroleum market emerged with reform of the economic management system of China's petroleum industry to the direction of marketization. Prior to the 1980's, the petroleum industry of China was the industrial department executing the planned management with the high centralization. Since the restriction of centralization system, the equilibrium of petro-supply and demand depended on the instructions from government. Because of the disappear of price signal, there was actually no petroleum market in China's economic system. Since the 1980's, with the realization of the economy marketization in China, the petroleum industry has begun to march the marketization and internationalization step by step. To the early 1990's, the petroleum marketing system has been formed generally even though the development of petroleum market was not the same in up and down stream of petroleum industry. This was a result of economic system transformation in some significance. Therefore, the process of the development of China's petroleum market was related closely to the reform proceeding of China's economic system consistently. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and evaluate the current development situation of China's petroleum market. According to the forming features of China's petroleum market, the discussion of this paper will concentrate on the four respects as follows: Situation of petroleum supply and demand in China; Resource allocation of China's petroleum industry in process of marketization; Current condition of China's petroleum market; Developmental trend of China's petroleum market. DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA'S PETROLEUM INDUSTRY AND THE SITUATION OF PETROLEUM SUPPLY AND DEMAND IN CHINA It was the first time for China to import the kerosene of 2100 gallon in 1863. Afterwards, China imported kerosene as many as 30,000 gallon in 1867, and even up to 0.28 million gallon in 1871. In 1878, the number raised to 2.4 million gallon. From 1863 to 1949, the "foreign oil" had governed the petroleum market of China for 80 years. In 1949, China produced only 120,000 tons of crude oil, which means China must continually import oil and oil products. P. 111