Quantitative Evaluation Of Supply Security And Obstacle Factors Analysis Of The Major Source Countries Of China’s Crude Oil Imports

Known as “black gold” and “economic blood”,oil is an important support for the sustainable and healthy development of a country’s economy and society.Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China has achieved remarkable progress in economic and social development,however,which in turn has triggered abrupt growth in crude oil consumption.Since 1996,China has changed from a self-sufficient net crude oil exporter into a net crude oil importer.After that,the external dependence of crude oil has continued to climb.Importing crude oil from the international market also facing a series of problems,such as “the unstable political and economic situations of crude oil suppliers,the complex geopolitical relations,international oil price and its frequent fluctuation,“the Malacca Dilemma”,intense geopolitical game between some great powers,fierce crude oil competition between China and some other major crude oil importers” and so on.Superposition of multiple factors makes China’s crude oil imports face huge risks of uncertainty.As the world’s most populous country and second-largest economy,high dependence of crude oil imports and the unstable international crude oil supply market is like a“Swords of Damocles” hanging over national energy security.How to cope with the uncertain international energy system and ensure crude oil supply security has become a major strategic issue related to China’s national economy and her people’s livelihood.Focus on the issue of China’s crude oil supply security,this paper firstly combed the oil resource conditions of world and China in recent years,then employed the event data analysis model to quantitatively measure the bilateral relationships between China and 21 major crude oil suppliers and 6 countries with significant influences on the “Strait of Malacca”.Based on the concept and connotation of energy supply security,the evaluation index system of supply security for China’s crude oil supplierswas constructed,the AHP-EVM combined weighting method was used to determined the weights of the indicators and the set pair analysis model was employed to quantitatively evaluate the supply security degrees of 21 source countries of China’s crude oil imports,then,we combined the research results of national bilateral relations and supply security degrees to put forward some specific plans and policy suggestions for crude oil trade cooperation.Lastly,the obstacle factor model was introduced to identify the main obstacle factors of the supply security degrees of 21 source countries of China’s crude oil imports.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The relations between China and most of her crude oil trading partners were at middle and low levels,but maintained overall upward trend in the past decade,crude oil import existed certain political relation risks,but which tend to decline.From the perspective of transport-related countries,China had relatively high level of relations with Malaysia and Singapore,and which kept overall upward trend.While,the relations between China and the United States,Japan and India were relatively low and volatile.Relations between China and great powers became an important factor affecting China’s crude oil transportation safety.(2)The supply security degrees of the 21 crude oil importing countries varied greatly.In general,the countries with higher supply security degrees were Russia,Venezuela,Kazakhstan and part of the Middle East,ones with lower supply security degrees were distributed in Africa and Asia-pacific region.Many suppliers are of low-medium and low-supply safety type and a large proportion of China’s crude oil imports came from high-risk suppliers,China faced great supply risks in the process of crude oil import.(3)For most suppliers,transport risks,reserves/production ratio,potential export ability,and political risks were the major obstacles which influenced their supply security levels,national bilateral relations,military expenditure,crude oil production were also the main obstacle factors for part of the suppliers.To prevent the risks,targeted governance measures should be adopted based on specific obstacles factors in each country.