One of the ironies of the current chaotic situation in the Middle East is that a country that could arguably be at risk of losing the most is standing aside.
While the US and some European powers agonise over whether – and how – they should intervene to prevent the disintegration of Iraq, China is absent. But China needs Iraqi oil in growing volumes. The country’s import dependence for crude and products now stands at 8m barrels a day and is rising. According to the latest International Energy Agency estimates, Chinese imports could be well over 11mbd by 2030. That is on modest assumptions about economic growth and generous assumptions about gains in efficiency and substitution out of oil, in sectors where a switch is possible. The figure could be higher if China cannot increase its own production.
The only country in the world likely to be able to provide such an increase in production is Iraq, and it is no accident that China is heavily invested in the development of fields such as Rumaila and West Qurna outside Basra in the South. On the Iraqi government’s own figures, China is the largest foreign investor in the country’s oil sector. As US oil consumption and import requirements decline, energy security has become a Chinese issue.