Mikkal Herberg Quoted on China's Middle East Oil Import
Mideast Oil Drives China Disputes
07/18/2011
Michael Lelyveld,
Radio Free Asia
China's heavy dependence on Middle East oil will continue to spur frictions with neighboring countries in the South China Sea, experts say.
Recent disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines about overlapping border claims have focused on rights to explore for oil and gas in offshore areas.
But relatively little attention has been paid to the large volumes of China's existing oil supplies that flow through the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
A Radio Free Asia review of China's customs data found that nearly half of the country's imported oil has come from the Middle East and North Africa this year. The proportion rises to nearly 80 percent with the inclusion of other African sources such as Angola and Sudan.
All of that oil threads through the narrow Strait of Malacca by tanker before crossing the South China Sea on its way to Chinese ports.
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Mikkal Herberg is a senior lecturer on international and Asian energy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. He is also the BP Foundation Senior Research Fellow for International Energy at the Pacific Council on International Policy and also serves as research director on Asian energy security at The National Bureau of Asian Research.
