China does not plan to increase imports of oil, a senior official said Wednesday, amid speculation that supply could come under pressure due to this month's devastating earthquake.
"China depends on the outside world for 47 percent of its oil demand. That's very high as it is," said Mu Hong, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top economic planning agency.
"Now with oil prices so high, it would be unwise to continue increasing the import of oil. It's a better approach to adopt even more energy-saving measures," he told a briefing in Beijing.
China, a net importer of oil since 1993, saw crude oil imports hit a new record of 163.17 million tonnes in 2007, up 12.4 percent over the previous year, the government said earlier this year.
Mu said he did not expect any major disruption in the supply of coal — which accounts for about two thirds of China's energy demand — but that China would also not export large amounts of it.
"Our domestic productive capacity is very large. At the current stage, we focus on guaranteeing the domestic demand, and we don't encourage large-scale export of coal," he said.
Demand for coal has risen rapidly since China experienced brown-outs early this decade, motivating a construction frenzy in the power industry, with large numbers of new coal-fired plants emerging across the country.
