That's what the EIA currently says. See the chart above (red line). BP doesn't agree, showing them up by 5.5% over 2010. Although the Chinese economy has undoubtedly been slowing of late, it's hard to believe it was sufficient to cause a fall in oil consumption, which would be unprecedented since the time of the 1980 oil shock.
More likely the EIA just has an error of some kind. I took a screenshot just so that if they fix it later, I can satisfy myself I wasn't dreaming:
What's the YTD, from either of these agencies or JODI/OPEC? China topped 10 mb/d some time back in the JODI data, IIRC.
ReplyDeleteOff-topic - Brandon, if you're reading, thanks for the book!
ReplyDeleteCould the error have been in 2010? A 10% YoY increase between '09 and '10 might be out of bounds.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, China's consumption cannot grow at 10%, or even 5%, per year for very long... sooner or later (and likely sooner at this point) I would expect to see exactly this.
ReplyDeleteNot saying that I disagree with you, given the BP data... but the probability is not zero.
A real drop in Chinese demand could cause quick, sharp fall in the price of oil. That would be good for everyone globally, especially the poor.
ReplyDeleteThis is slightly off-topic, bit not for the earlywarn blog. I was meeting with an oil field equipment company this week and one of their sales people noted that as US rig count has come down this year, number of wells drilled has gone up. The reason - upgrades to rig equipment to speed operations, especially top drives, better rig control systems and quicker rig moves thanks to horizontal drilling. There some EROI for you.