New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) prices for December delivery of light, sweet crude oil stood at 58.73 U.S. dollars per barrel on Tuesday. The lowest price in recent weeks -- and the lowest price since Feb. 16 -- was 56.82 U.S. dollars per barrel on Oct. 20.

The drop in the oil price is good news for China's oil imports. In the first nine months, China's imports of crude oil rose 16.3 percent to 109 million tons.

Refined oil products were up 25.5 percent to 29 million tons.

China has been fiercely criticized since the international crude oil price began rising in 2004. The country's oil consumption and surging imports were blamed as key factors in the soaring oil price.

In fact, when the average WTI price soared 36.8 percent in 2005 year-on-year to a record high of 56.7 U.S. dollars per barrel, both oil imports and domestic consumption fell in China.

According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, China consumed 0.5 percent less crude oil and oil products in 2005 than in 2004. A separate report issued by the country's National Development and Reform Commission says that China's net oil imports in 2005 were 136.17 million tons, 7.56 million tons less than the 2004 figure, or a decrease of 5.3 percent. As a result, China's oil import dependency dropped to 42.9 percent in 2005, 2.2 percentage points lower than in 2004.

If the international oil price had been driven up by Chinese demand, as some western analysts believed, the global oil price should have dropped in 2005 instead of continuing to surge.

Just as China's lower oil imports failed to halt last year's soaring oil price, its rising oil imports this year do not appear to be impacting the downward global trend in oil prices.

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