Will China’s Economic Stimulus Have Any Impact On Oil Prices?

Since the mid-1990s, China’s economic growth rate has been one of the most important determinants of the oil price (and of the gas price too as, historically, 70 percent of this has been derived from the oil price). The vast disparity between the country’s energy requirements to power its economic growth on the one hand, and its lack of indigenous oil reserves on the other, drove the commodities ‘super cycle’ from that decade.

This was characterised by consistently rising prices for the key commodities used in its economic…