China: diesel production by month 2019-2020
Fossil fuels in China
With abundant coal resources, China was the world’s top coal producer, accounting for nearly half of the total coal production worldwide as of 2019. China’s coal production is regarded as the critical driving force behind the country’s continuous growth, nonetheless, insufficient to satisfy its rapidly increasing energy demand. To bolster its industrial demand and more effectively use the energy, China made an effort to diversify its energy supply.
The oil production in China has seen significant increase since 1980s. Moreover, as China’s environmental regulations imposed on high-polluting sectors being stricter, coal production industry in China shows declining tendency. Instead, China prioritizes the expansion of alternative electric generators, such as hydroelectricity, natural gas, nuclear energy and other renewable sources, with the purpose of reducing carbon emissions and alleviating air pollution in China’s urban areas. The hydroelectric power generation in China had amounted to 1.2 gigawatts in 2018 and is estimated to keep growing in the near future. China is also one of the world’s leading natural gas producers as of 2018, with 176 billion cubic meters of extracted natural gas.
Energy production in China is dominated by three large state-owned enterprises, namely China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), Petrochina and CNOOC. As the world’s largest oil and gas company, Chinese energy major Sinopec had generated an annual revenue of about 395 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.