Oil, known as the "blood of industry" and "black gold", occupies an important position in the country's economic development and national defense and security, and is an important strategic material.
The amount of oil reserves that a country has can not only reflect the country's economic development potential to a certain extent, but also reflect the country's ability to resist risks when encountering special circumstances.
As one of the most important economies in the world, the United States has proven oil reserves of as many as 68.8 billion tons, while Japan has only 8.2 million tons.
Japan: 8.2 million tons of reserves are in short supply, and oil is basically dependent on imports
Japan's narrow land area means that Japan cannot have too many oil reserves, which is exactly the case, and Japan's proven oil reserves are only 8.2 million tons.
This is far from enough for Japan's huge oil demand today, so Japan is extremely dependent on imports for oil. Japan certainly knows that it also has the risk of being "stuck" in oil, and for so many years Japan has been actively expanding its oil trade objects, in order to promote the diversification of oil sources and avoid its own energy security being controlled by others.
In addition to increasing the number of oil traders, Japan has not given up its attempts to develop its own oil industry.
Due to the small scale of the country's oil industry, technology research and development in related fields has been at a relatively backward level, after the efforts of the Japanese government in recent years, it has successfully increased the production capacity of the oil industry by more than 5 percentage points.
In addition, Japan is a country with a vast ocean area, and Japan has begun to gradually devote more energy to the surface of the sea, hoping to find a large amount of oil on the seabed.
The United States: A large country with deep pockets of oil reserves
Unlike Japan, the United States not only has proven oil reserves of 68.8 billion tons, which is a veritable oil reserve country, but also the first country in the world to develop oil, and the first oil well in the United States was built in the mid-19th century, which is the world's earliest oil well.
It is precisely because of its abundant oil reserves that the United States was able to catch up in the second industrial revolution and become a world-class industrial power.
Oil is not only an important pillar of the take-off of American industry, but also an important foundation for American hegemony. After World War II, the United States knew more about oil than any other country, and launched a series of dizzying operations around oil, grabbing huge benefits for the United States.
After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, stabilizing the status and influence of the dollar in the international arena became a top priority, and it was at this time that the United States chose oil instead of gold to become the anchor of the dollar.
The United States controls the Middle East with one hand and domestic oil exports with the other, and finally decided that the international oil trade can only be settled by the US dollar, so that the US dollar can continue to play its role as the most important international currency in the world.
China: The oil industry has a bright future and a long way to go
Today, China has become the world's second largest economy after the United States, and its daily oil consumption is also astronomical, so how much oil reserves do we have proven?
3.85 billion tons.
Although this figure is also a large number, it is somewhat insufficient compared with the development status of the mainland, so the mainland is now also a big oil importer.
Out of concern about domestic energy security, the mainland is also actively promoting good relations with several major oil-producing regions in the world, such as the Middle East and Central Asia.
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia's oil trade in Europe has been sanctioned, and the mainland has taken advantage of the situation to undertake a large number of Russian oil trade orders, and the diversification of the mainland's oil import sources has taken a step forward.
Of course, while vigorously developing the international oil trade, we have also not forgotten to explore domestic oil reserves.
Recently, Sanmenxia in Henan Province on the mainland has explored a large oil field with reserves of 100 million tons, which has inspired the hearts of countless Chinese people.
In the past, the mainland's oil industry was also quite backward, but after entering the 21st century, the mainland has discovered a number of large oil and gas fields in Xinjiang, Bohai Bay and other places, not only the proven reserves but also the annual oil production is steadily increasing, and the mainland has also entered the ranks of energy powers in one fell swoop.
But the discovery of the Sanmenxia large oil field is still exciting. Because in the traditional concept, there are generally no oil fields in small and medium-sized basins, and even if there are, they are oil fields with small reserves.
The discovery of the large Sanmenxia oil field shattered this conventional wisdom and made us realize that it is possible to contain rich oil resources even in small and medium-sized basins.
But then again, oil is a non-renewable fossil resource that will be consumed over time, and there will always be a day when it will be completely used up, haven't we thought about what we will do when the time comes?
Our country, of course, took this issue into account and began to lay out it early.
Our country has been vigorously developing renewable and clean energy, such as wind and solar energy, and even for a while, we also set our sights on tidal energy, in order to fundamentally reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy sources such as oil.
As for whether our efforts for so long have yielded results, just take a look at the development status of new energy vehicles now.
In the civil field, automobiles have always been "big oil consumers", and urban air pollution also has a lot to do with the exhaust emissions of automobiles, but with our continuous efforts in the field of new energy for decades, now our new energy vehicle technology has been far ahead in the world, and even developed countries in Europe have to import a large number of new energy vehicles from the mainland.
The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the mainland is quite high, and with the maturity of technology, we have not only developed new energy family cars, but also developed new energy buses, new energy trucks and other models, electricity has gradually replaced oil, become the main source of power for cars.
epilogue
Although we have taken many measures to deal with the shortage of oil, this does not mean that we can rest easy in the future, and the mainland's energy security is still a combination of opportunities and challenges.
The opportunity is that the discovery of the large oil field in Sanmenxia tells us that there are still many places on the land of China where there may be rich oil reserves, and our new energy technology is quite mature.
The challenge is that we are still importing a significant portion of our oil resources.
Therefore, we must not relax for a moment and do our best to ensure our energy security.