Others News
- Nation's fuel shortages may ease
Date: 30-Jan-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
THE country's fuel shortages may ease this year as the world's second-biggest energy user expands railway and grid networks to facilitate supplies to factories in the southeast, the nation's top economic planner said.
Tightness in coal and power supplies will ease as new railway tracks start operating, easing transportation bottlenecks, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement distributed at its 2006-2007 economic operations briefing in Beijing yesterday.
China had a fourth year of power shortages last year, forcing factories in the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou to run their own electricity generators using high-sulfur fuels, which add to pollution. The government is enforcing tighter emission rules to boost energy efficiency and help cool an economy that expanded more than 10 percent in each of the past four years.
'The priority is to push for resource conservation, environmental protection and increase the quality of industrial output,'' the commission said in the statement.
The government spent 164.9 billion yuan (US$21 billion) on railways in the first 11 months of last year, almost double the amount a year earlier, the railway ministry said in a statement Dec. 15. The government will spend 60 billion yuan to buy train cars to transport passengers and coal, Xinhua said Jan. 15.
State Grid Corp. of China, the larger of the nation's two power distributors, plans to double its spending on grid network in 2007 to 202.5 billion yuan. The nation's power plants last year increased installed capacity by 20 percent and boosted output 14 percent, China Electricity Council said Jan. 12.
'Local government must be on high alert to the risk of a rebound in investment in energy-intensive industries as power supplies are ample in some regions,'' Zhu Hongren, deputy director of economic operations at the commission told reporters.
The government wants to stop a record US$177.5 billion trade surplus from fueling inflation, bad loans and investment in idle factories.
Oil product supplies may still be tight in some areas, which will add to fluctuations in raw material and energy prices, the country's top planner said in the statement.
China is filling emergency oil storage tanks to shield itself from supply disruptions. It is building facilities in eastern China's Zhenhai, Zhoushan Qingdao and in the northern city of Dalian.
'China is a latecomer in the building of strategic oil stockpiles and our stockpiles are still smaller than that of other developed countries,'' Han Yongwen, a spokesman for the commission said yesterday. 'The current level is definitely not adequate to meet China's needs.''
The 3.7 billion yuan oil storage tank in Zhenhai is operating, Han said. The nation is studying the feasibility of expanding future stockpiles, he said.
China's oil imports rose 14.5 percent in 2006 to 145.2 million metric tons (2.9 million barrels a day), the Beijing- based Customs General Administration of China said Jan. 11.
Coal stockpiles stood at 144 million metric tons at the end of last year, enough to meet demand for normal operations, Zhu said. Production of coal, which is used to generate two-thirds of the country's power needs, may reach 2.5 billion metric tons in 2007, 4 percent more than 2006, Wang Shouzhen, director of the Shanxi Coal Industry Bureau, said in a statement Dec. 28.
The oil and chemical sector will maintain good growth momentum this year, Zhu said. China's oil and chemical companies' profit rose 18 percent to 434.5 billion yuan in 2006 as producers and suppliers expanded output to meet rising demand, he said.
Sponsor Results:
