IEA reports China beats US as No.1 oil & energy user

The IEA reported yesterday that China has now overtaken the US in terms of energy use and is now officially the world’s biggest combined oil and energy user.

The IEA’s chief economist, said “In the year 2000, the US consumed twice as much energy as China, now China consumes more than the US.”

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest oil exporter, for the first time last year sold more oil to China than the US, which for decades had been its most important customer.

The IEA noted yesterday that China had consumed energy equivalent to 2.252 billion tons of oil last year from resources including coals, oil, nuclear, natural gas and water, around five percent more than that of the US, which had been positioned as the largest energy consumer for most of the 20th century.

However the US is still the biggest oil consumer, going through an average of roughly 19 million barrels a day, compared to China’s 9.2 million.

IEA Report is Rejected by China

However, an official with the National Energy Administration (NEA) Zhou Xian today rejected the report by the IEA, stressing that IEA’s data on China’s energy use is unreliable as the nation consumed 2.252 billion tonnes of oil equivalent in 2009, which is only 0.4 percent more than US’s 2.17 billion tonnes.

An NEA official who declined to be named claimed that the IEA and China’s statistic authority collected data from different sources, which had led to the different results.

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