Foreign oil dependency up

Level for last year reflects high local output costs, low global crude price

China's foreign oil dependency level reached 64.4 percent of total demand in 2016, 3.8 percent higher than the previous year - and was expected to rise again in 2017, a leading economics think tank in China said on Thursday.

The mainland's domestic crude production dropped to 200 million metric tons in 2016 due to high production costs of domestic crude oil at an average of $45-50 per barrel, higher than the global average, according to the CNPC Economics and Technology Research Institute.