PiSigma
"the engineer"
China have several hundred years of coal reserve at current usage.
Plastics is actually made mostly from very light oil or Natural gas liquids (C3s -C5s). Not the same as liquid fuels that goes into cars
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Plastics is actually made mostly from very light oil or Natural gas liquids (C3s -C5s). Not the same as liquid fuels that goes into cars
Here, it is 37 years worth of coal according to current usage.
Wikipedia agrees based on total reserves and production:
Welcome any other sources that you can provide.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Are you seriously using Wikipedia as a source? Ur link didn't specify if the reserve is p1, p2 or p3.
I think it should be separate:
1. Oil used for energy/transport is an energy security issue
2. But oil used to produce plastics is an industrial/manufacturing security issue
EDIT. If anything, domestic production of olefins will make energy security worse by reducing the total amount of oil imports/stocks. In a blockade scenario, theoretically the oil used to produce plastics could be diverted towards energy security, with alkylation or catalytic reforming.
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Can you please provide the links then. Even the most generous coal reserves of China also list it at 180 bn tonnes, when China is consuming more than 4 bn tonnes annually, so 45 by this estimate.
Does it really matter? The plan is to eliminate coal consumption in 30 years anyway
China's coal reserves is such a poor horse that gets beaten up every time someone claims China running out of coal soon. It just does not want to die!
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Can't find the sources anymore. Back in the early 2000s P2 reserves were over 300 bn tonnes. And it only considered higher quality resources. In Xinjiang there are p1 resource that is basically not touched. Entire Shanxi is sitting on 100 meters of coal.
And in case anyone cares to know. Oil reserves of China is a BS number as well. Only p1 reserves are published. US uses p2 numbers. Venezuela's 300 bn barrels reserve are p3 numbers.
Sounds like a distinction without a difference. The bottom line for energy security is how much oil you are importing. The less you need, for any and all applications, the less you import.
Domestic production of olefins with coal—which was the whole point—obviously doesn't use oil.
antiterror13
Brigadier
The Earth, especially resource‑rich regions like China is vast, and we’re nowhere near running out of oil or coal. If supplies ever tighten, prices rise, investment surges, and suddenly more reserves become economically viable to discover and extract. That cycle has repeated for decades.
I’m not concerned about depletion at all; we’re a long way from exhausting these resources, and it’s very likely we’ll rely on them far less in the next 20–30 years anyway.