BRI: Feeding the dragon

BRI: Feeding the dragon

Driving the economic engineOil plays an integral role in driving economic growth globally. With rising demand and falling domestic production, imports have climbed. Our chart on seaborne imports of crude oil shows a steadily climbing graph. Imports, which were at 7 million barrels per day in 2017, increased several-fold to a high of 11.3 million barrels per day in June 2020. This has also coincided with a rise in refining capacity in China over the last two years.In 2019, about 72.5% of China's total consumption of crude oil was imported, according to a February report by news website Global Times.Apart from pipeline imports from Russia, China imports crude oil from almost all major oil-producing countries. The Top 20 charts show the global nature of sourcing by Chinese refiners. In some of these key destinations, China has also invested significant capital either through standalone investments or as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), possibly in a bid to ensure continuous and reliable access to oil.NOTE: Under Refinitiv's BRI methodology, projects characterized as BRI Projects are those that require a signed memorandum of understanding or a joint statement of cooperation between China and the host country. The projects need to