Liam Denning, Columnist

Oil Bulls, We Need to Talk About China

Sinopec's slowing domestic sales are bad news for the rally.

March 29, 2016 at 4:32 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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Remember China? You know: big place, fair-sized population, rising geopolitical behemoth and all that. In oil circles, it used to be all anyone talked about. Just recently, though, it has gotten a little sidelined by other topics such as a rumored supply freeze or a jump in U.S. gasoline demand.

But we need to talk about China. It is still indispensable to a real recovery in oil prices. Even with a slowdown in economic growth now established, China is forecast to account for a third of the projected increase in global oil consumption by 2021. Its demand for other commodities is also vital to sustaining many of the other developing economies expected to suck up more oil.