In recent days a series of media articles surfaced pointing to a concerning situation in China. The New Scientist reported:

At the end of a cold and stormy winter, the country has just 12 days of coal reserves at most power stations. Some provinces, including Hebei, bordering Beijing, have less than a week's coal left. This is a record low, the state electricity regulatory commission revealed on Tuesday.

This is a guest post by Friend of TOD Jeffrey J. Brown, an independent petroleum geologist in the Dallas, Texas area. His e-mail address is westexas@aol.com.

You can also check out Jason Bradford's recent interview with Jeff for The Reality Report over at Global Public Media here.

Building on prior work by Matt Simmons and Kenneth Deffeyes, I have written a number of articles on Net Oil Exports, often with my frequent co-author, “Khebab,” most recently, “Net Oil Exports and the Iron Triangle.” We are going to present a quantitative assessment of future net exports by the top net exporters at the ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas) conference in October, in Houston, Texas, and we will be doing a preview of the paper in late September.