Current Situation,Trend and Strategies of International Pricing of China's Oil Import

At present,China has become one of the biggest buyers of the resources(such as oil,bean,and metal).Since May of 2003,China has caught up with Japan and becomes the second biggest consumer of petroleum.As the IEA(International Energy Agency) forecast,the amount of China's petroleum demand would be increasing.However,as the second largest petroleum consumption and import country in the world,China does not have any weight in the current international petroleum pricing mechanism at all.China's import volume makes up 2% of the world oil supply.However,China just have no more than 0.1% of the pricing power.In this paper,we reviewed the history of the international oil pricing system.Based on China's oil consumption and production,we got the trend of China's oil import(from 1 703.5×10~4t in 1996 to 8 298.5×10~4t in 2003,14 372.4×10~4t in 2004 and 13 618.5×10~4t in 2005) and the dependent rates(from 9.77% in 1996 to 32.89% in 2003,45.09% in 2004 and 42.87% in 2005).The influences of having no oil pricing power on China's economy were analyzed,including increasing a lot of losses and risks of the relevant industries which produce or consume oil and other oil products,making a negative effect on China's balance of payment and so on.All of the situations and the negative influences are threatening China's economy and finance security,and also become a barrier to China's economic development.Therefore,some strategies should be adopted on the basis of holding the pricing power of petroleum.One of the strategies is to develop China's oil futures market,which is important to China's institutional investors in the national market.Besides taking part in the futures market,the enterprises need to adopt some measures to prevent the risks of oil price fluctuation such as making a long-term cooperation with other countries and enterprises especially the developed countries,learning advanced skills and experiences,and organizing price unions with relevant enterprises to gain the international pricing power.