Chinese tiger has nothing in tank

Chinese tiger has nothing in tank

The problem would intensify as winter approached, and was starting to affect exports, warned the Commerce Ministry, since diesel was crucial for shifting products to ports.

The system is suffering from pressure of demand to sustain its economic growth at the current 11.5per cent - with China now the second-biggest consumer of oil after the US.

Diesel imports rose 46.5per cent in the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period last year.

The other cause of the supply-demand mismatch, is the stuttering transition from government-controlled prices to market pricing.

The Government wishes to graduate towards a system that allows prices to move with international markets.

This is a classic misleading headline done for propagandistic purposes. China is not running out of oil. Their importation of oil is increasing, not decreasing. They need more supplies just like the US. The US has just seen its oil decrease with this fire! It is so bad, it is making world oil prices shoot up! And this affects China. China's distribution network needs to be strengthened and expanded, of course. And pricing needs to be improved. Not that the US should gloat about this. Our last 40 years of history is a long chronicle of the US refusing to reset pricing and distribution of oil in light of geological reality. The US has opted for ignoring the oil mess and pretending all is well even as it bleeds us to death, financially. The Chinese are coping with a sudden surge in oil use and this surge is the other half of world oil prices. The US refusal to cut back while the Chinese consume more efficiently is the key to this sudden rise in world oil profits.

Then there are the wars and boycotts. The US enforced boycott of Iran is also driving up world oil prices. Some people think that the Arab Sunnis have increased production so prices will fall to 'only' $70 a barrel. I remember last year when the prophets in the mainstream media were lying to viewers and readers, claiming that oil prices were going to drop below $50 a barrel and perhaps, $30 a barrel by today.

Some good news in all this gloom, from a reader here:

The Second Wave came about a decade ago with the arrival of the first commercial "thin-film" solar cells. This established that new solar cells based on a stack of layers 100 times thinner than silicon wafers can make a solar cell that is just as good. However, the first thin-film approaches were handicapped by two issues:

1. The cell's semiconductor was deposited using slow and expensive high-vacuum based processes because it was not known how to employ much simpler and higher-yield printing processes (and how to develop the required semiconductor ink).
*snip*
The Third Wave of solar power consists of companies addressing the above shortcomings and opportunities. Most every of the new companies address one or the other of the above aspects. One company -- Nanosolar -- brings together the entire conjunction of all seven areas of innovation, each break-through in their own right, to deliver a dramatic improvement in the cost-efficiency, yield, and throughput of the production of much thinner solar cells.

Research and development of solar systems as well as wind continue. But we can't wait passively. We could have taken the Greenspan 1% interest rate bonus and used it to retrofit all US homes with solar arrays. But we chose to bid up existing or new housing with no energy systems. This foolish choice should have been guided by our political class who should have lectured us and taught us all about the Hubbert Oil Peak and our trade deficit due to importing oil and energy. But they did not and still won't. So the next cycle of 'free money' will be wasted even more than the last cycle, I fear.