Preface

Energy plays a crucial role in China's economic and strategic security and sustainable development. On June 13，2014，President Xi Jinping concluded five points of energy revolution at the sixth meeting of the Central Financial Leadership Group focusing on energy security，5th of which is to achieve energy security through with strengthening international cooperation and making effective use of global resources under opening policy.

Currently，China imports a large number of oil，gas and coal，with an oil dependency ratio close to 70%. The change of China's energy demand has an increasingly important impact on the world market. China has already transformed itself from a mere buyer into an important force that affects the world's energy markets.

Since 2016，the international energy market has been affected by many aspects. On supply side，American shale oil production continues increasing，while OPEC and Russia achieved an agreement to limit production. The outcome of these two forces is a stable supply in global oil market. On demand side，China's economy enters the New Normal，her growth rate of energy demand is also slowing down. However，as China pushes towards clean energy transition，demand for natural gas increases rapidly. In terms of price，driven by demand growth and the impact of earlier low oil investment，international oil prices gradually bottomed out since 2016，from a minimum of about $27 （WTI） rose to current level around $70 per barrel.

In addition to these changes in supply and demand fundamentals，Sino-US trade war，China's economic trend，U.S. economic policy，US dollar exchange rate，situation in the Middle East，Russo-European relations and Ukraine situation，the Iranian nuclear issue，the DPRK nuclear issue，economic reform in Saudi Arabis，Aramco IPO among other geopolitical and geoeconomic events also have huge impacts on the international energy market. With this changing world，it is very important to study the international energy situation，to judge the trend of the international energy market from the medium and short term，and to strengthen China's energy security and promote long-term sustainable development.

This book is one of a series of results from research project of “BRI，Global Energy Security and New Energy Technical Economics”，supervised by the Institute of Quantitative Economics and Technical Economics at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The book covers many important issues affecting the international energy market，which will also deserve long term attention.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section focuses on situation analysis of global energy market such as oil，gas and import oil market，including analysis till the end of 2016，first half of 2017，and the end of 2017. The second section focuses on the analysis on those important issues which affect international energy market，including the Belt and Road Initiative，G20 Mechanism，President Donald Trump's energy policy of USA and the economic reforms in Saudi Arabia.

Liu Qiang

Aug.8th，2018