Professor Kjell Aleklett, (known for his research on the world’s declining oil resources) and his researchers at Uppsala University have been given a challenging task – they will estimate China’s future need for oil and gas.

“What our own future will be here in the West depends very much on what happens in China,” says Kjell Aleklett.

“Today China uses much less energy per capita than Europe and the rest of the Western world does. But if many of those Chinese who currently live in rural areas (which is the great majority) move to the cities then China’s energy needs will greatly increase.

“Already China imports half of the oil it uses and those imports will need to increase if energy consumption rises since China already extracts as much oil as it can from its own reserves. But more oil barrels to China means fewer to the rest of the world,” states Kjell Aleklett.

Aleklett and his research group promote the idea of “Peak Oil” i.e. that the extraction of oil worldwide will reach a maximum in the year 2010 and can then only decline since the existing oil reserves are waning and too few new fields are being opened up relative to the growing demand. His research on calculation models for energy needs and availability has been given great attention around the world and now China has responded to his warning words on future access to oil. China’s Sinopec, the world’s third largest refinery company, recently summoned the Uppsala professor for a conversation.

“ 'If your calculations are correct then we are making mistaken investments costing billions of dollars,' said one of the company’s leaders to me during our meeting. Now they want to support our research with one of their Ph.D. students here in Uppsala,” said Kjell Aleklett, who was actually in China to sign an agreement with the Chinese University of Petroleum when Sinopec called. (The agreement is signed; this was the start of the research program)

“It is a clear signal that industry is taking our research results seriously,” says Kjell Akeklett, who earlier started a collaboration with Volvo Trucks and Technova, a company in the Toyota family.

Together with the Chinese university, Kjell Aleklett’s group will map out China’s future requirements for oil and gas.

“They have started research that resembles ours and through collaboration we will get access to data on China that we never would have otherwise,” says Kjell Aleklett.