But why would China want oil and natural gas from literally an ocean away? The shipping costs would be
enormous.
China--if it was smart--would aggressively pursue policies of aggressively converting coal to motor fuels (China has huge reserves of coal), providing assistance to exploit new oilfields in eastern Siberia, and aggressively developing a nuclear power program based on using thorium-232 as fuel (since China has large reserves of thorium from their rare-earth metals mining program).
Gerald Celente--a well-known economic doomsayer who has made some salient points (I've communicated with him by email a couple of times) has said that the country that can successfully exploit local resources and markets will be the big winners over the next decade. China--sitting on huge reserves of coal and large reserves of thorium-232 that could be used in the liquid fluoride thorium reactor--could achieve near-complete independence from imported oil within 10 to 12 years. The USA under the right regulatory environment--especially encouraging development of local resources, streamlined regulations and a business-friendly income tax system--could do the same, especially with huge amount of coal still in the ground, hundreds of thousands of tons of thorium-232 for the LFTR reactor, new production techniques to extract out oil and gas on a huge scale, exploiting oil shale and opening up previously-closed areas for oil and gas extraction.
"But why would China want oil and natural gas from literally an ocean away? The shipping costs would be enormous. China--if it was smart--would aggressively pursue policies of aggressively converting coal to motor fuels (China has huge reserves of coal), providing assistance to exploit new oilfields in eastern Siberia, and aggressively developing a nuclear power program based on using thorium-232 as fuel (since China has large reserves of thorium from their rare-earth metals mining program). Gerald Celente--a well-known economic doomsayer who has made some salient points (I've communicated with him by email a couple of times) has said that the country that can successfully exploit local resources and markets will be the big winners over the next decade. China--sitting on huge reserves of coal and large reserves of thorium-232 that could be used in the liquid fluoride thorium reactor--could achieve near-complete independence from imported oil within 10 to 12 years. The USA under the right regulatory environment--especially encouraging development of local resources, streamlined regulations and a business-friendly income tax system--could do the same, especially with huge amount of coal still in the ground, hundreds of thousands of tons of thorium-232 for the LFTR reactor, new production techniques to extract out oil and gas on a huge scale, exploiting oil shale and opening up previously-closed areas for oil and gas extraction."
Sir they are into the Oil Sands in Canada.