The most obvious benefit of lower oil prices is lower import cost of crude oil. Due to the increase of American oil production and the sustained development of China's economy, China has replaced the United States as the world's largest net oil importer in 20 14, and its overall oil consumption ranks second in the world after the United States. The low international oil price will directly reduce the cost of China's oil import and petrochemical industry, and reduce the overall operating cost of China's economy through industrial chain transmission. Falling oil prices will also stimulate the growth of China's consumer economy to a certain extent, which is conducive to promoting domestic economic prosperity. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that for every 65,438+00% drop in oil prices, China's GDP growth rate will increase by about 0.65,438+05 percentage points. The International Monetary Fund predicts that falling oil prices may increase China's GDP growth rate by 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points this year and 0.5 to 0.9 percentage points in 20 16. At the same time, in the critical period of China's economic transformation and upgrading, the sharp drop in international oil prices has given China's economy more room for self-adjustment and reduced the cost of transformation and upgrading.
2. Promote reform in the energy field.
Falling international oil prices will reduce overall energy costs and support energy reform. In fact, the challenge of China's energy system and energy price reform is not a technical problem, but the main obstacle of reform is energy cost and how to meet energy demand. Due to historical reasons, China's energy price has been controlled for a long time, and the government adopts the principle of cost plus to set energy prices, so the public is used to relatively low energy prices and is very sensitive to price increases. As a developing country, limited by the ability to pay and people's willingness to pay, the process of energy price reform is relatively slow. The continuous low international oil price will greatly reduce the restriction of oil price on China's energy price reform, and provide a relatively relaxed environment for promoting energy market-oriented reform and rationalizing the relevant price system. In fact, the China government has decided to let the market play a more important role, and the energy price reform in China is accelerating.
3. This provides an opportunity to expand the strategic oil reserve.
The significance of petroleum reserve in strategic support is self-evident. The International Energy Agency stipulates that the "safety line" of a country's strategic oil reserves is equivalent to the country's 90-day net oil import. According to estimates, China's strategic oil reserves (plus commercial reserves) are about 70 days, which is still far from the target of 90 days, even lower than the current level of average 172 days for net oil importing countries. In 20 14, China's dependence on foreign oil was close to 60%. According to the forecast, this proportion may exceed 65% by 2020 and climb to 75% by 2030. The International Energy Agency (IEA) also released a report that China will replace the United States as the world's largest crude oil consumer in the next 20 years. The drop in international oil prices is undoubtedly a good opportunity for China, which is increasingly dependent on foreign oil. According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs, China imported 30.37 million tons of crude oil (about 7170,000 barrels per day) in February of 20 14, an increase of nearly 20% from the previous month and a year-on-year increase of 13.4%, setting a record for a single month. In 20 14, China's crude oil imports increased by nearly 10%, reaching 308.38 million tons (about 2.3 billion barrels).
4. Accelerate the launch of China crude oil futures.
China is the largest oil importer in the world, but China has no pricing power or voice in international crude oil prices. At present, the benchmark prices of major commodities in the world are all priced in the futures market. The call to launch China crude oil futures and strive for the pricing power of crude oil has been going on for many years. 20 14 12 12 the China securities regulatory commission said at the press conference that it had approved the Shanghai futures exchange to conduct crude oil futures trading in its international energy trading center, and the specific listing time will be announced in due course. The current low oil price period is a favorable opportunity to launch crude oil futures and establish pricing influence. The listing of "China Edition" crude oil futures in the future will provide a guarantee for the price safety of crude oil, which means that China has taken a new step in obtaining international crude oil pricing power.
Second, the adverse impact of falling oil prices on China's economy
1, strengthening deflation expectations.
20 14 February, China's CPI rose 1.5% year-on-year, up 0.3% month-on-month, and the year-on-year increase was less than 2% for five consecutive months. PPI decreased by 3.3% year-on-year and 0.6% quarter-on-quarter, and remained in a negative range for 34 consecutive months, which triggered concerns about deflation in China. Crude oil is not only an important energy variety, but also an important raw material for industry, agriculture and transportation. The drop in crude oil price not only means the aggravation of imported deflation, but also lowers the prices of other major industrial products in China, driving down the overall price level, which may further strengthen China's deflation expectation.
2. It is not conducive to the development of new energy industry and energy conservation and emission reduction.
Oil is a traditional energy source, and there is a certain competitive relationship with new energy sources. In recent years, high oil prices have provided entry incentives for the development of new energy industries and promoted the rapid development of new energy industries. If the international oil price remains low for a long time, reducing the cost of oil and increasing the market demand for oil will probably have a crowding-out effect on the development of new energy industry, especially for new energy that is being commercialized on a large scale, which will accelerate the crowding-out effect under the immature and imperfect supporting market environment. At the same time, low oil prices may lead to an increase in oil consumption in the whole society, and industries with high energy consumption will have a chance to recover, which is not conducive to the adjustment of industrial structure and energy consumption structure, and is also not conducive to energy conservation and emission reduction and ecological governance. According to the bulletin of the national pollution source survey, petroleum pollutants are one of the most important pollutants in China, with a large amount of production and discharge.
3. Reduce the output and capacity of the petroleum industry.
Long-term low oil price operation will reduce the output of oil enterprises in the short term and reduce the production capacity in the long term. If the oil price continues to run low or even fall, it will reduce the profit and profitability of the oil industry. If the oil price falls below the cost, it will also lead to losses for oil companies. In the short term, oil industry enterprises will cut production in order to reduce losses. In the long run, it will reduce the oil production capacity, even make some enterprises in the oil industry quit, and affect the development of talents, technology and factor markets related to the oil industry through the transmission of the industrial chain.
Third, China should seize the opportunity of falling oil prices.
First of all, we should take this opportunity to comprehensively promote the reform of mixed ownership in petroleum and related industries and improve the international competitiveness of the petroleum industry. Since the reform and opening up, the growth of China's petroleum industry has been calculated by the growth of total factor productivity, which is supported by the growth of factor input rather than the growth of factor productivity. The fundamental way out for petroleum industry to realize the transformation from factor and investment-driven to innovation-driven is to realize the diversification of equity structure. Secondly, we should gradually improve the layout of strategic reserves, commercial reserves and asset reserves of oil to hedge the systemic risk of international oil price fluctuations. China, as a major consumer and importer of global oil, should gradually increase the equity diversification investment of global oil assets, not just the greenfield investment, during the period when oil prices continue to fall. At the same time, gradually improve the petroleum strategic reserve and commercial reserve system, form a diversified portfolio of petroleum global assets, and hedge systemic risks; Third, do a good job in the technical development and promotion of new energy. When oil prices fall, accelerate the transformation of coal energy structure, encourage more distributed new energy development, and increase the construction of new energy sources such as natural gas energy stations, photovoltaic power stations and wind power stations to give full play to the complementary role of energy when oil prices rise again in the future; Finally, strengthen international energy cooperation. When the international oil price falls, China, as the largest importer, has an increased voice in business cooperation. It can take this opportunity to expand negotiations and cooperation with Russia, Central and Southeast Asian countries and Canada and other oil exporting countries. While gradually reducing excessive dependence on oil sources in Middle East countries, we will speed up the construction of oil and gas pipelines such as China-Kazakhstan, China-Kazakhstan, China-Russia and China-Myanmar, and open up diversified oil import channels.