The pivotal year was 2009, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). It was then that China consumed more energy than any other country in the world, even the U.S., prompting an expert at the IEA expert to proclaim "the start of a new age in the history of energy."
For Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest oil reserves and is the world's largest oil exporter, that new age couldn’t begin fast enough. Over the past 10 years or so, the Kingdom had been forging closer trade ties with China, becoming its key source of oil. In 2009, Saudi oil exports to China reached one million barrels per day (bpd), or 20% of its total oil imports and nearly double the number of barrels it exported the previous year; in contrast, U.S. imports of Saudi oil fell to less than one million bpd in 2009 for the first time in over two decades.
According to Tim Niblock, professor of Arab Gulf studies at the University of Exeter in the U.K., the growing Sino-Saudi oil trade is a reflection of the two countries' "mutually dependent relationship that has advanced fairly steadily since 2000." The Chinese need Saudi Arabia as a stable, established oil producer -- all the more so today as turmoil across the Middle East continues, pushing the price of Brent crude to as high as US$116 a barrel in early March, and the Kingdom calms markets with pledges to increase production to fill any shortfall in supply. The Saudis need China’s burgeoning demand for oil in light of flat, or even decreasing, demand among consumers in developed markets. Even with the Chinese government lowering the official target earlier this year for average GDP growth over the next five years to 7% from 7.5%, the country's thirst for oil looks unlikely to abate.
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