Yes EN, Chinese coal's not enough. For 2 main reasons I think. One is sheer demand on a scale we've never seen and we're merely observing the bottom or start of the growth curve.

The second is China's largest and westernmost province, Xinjiang, is perhaps not a strategically reliable longterm source of energy even though it has 30% of China’s oil reserves, 34% of its natural gas reserves and 40% of its coal reserves.

Xinjiang is faraway and Beijing’s authority is questioned by some citizens. This place has also had a low-key (in media at least) "Holy" war going on for a century or so, although China doesn't discuss it.

For example, Chinese police raided a Xinjiang terrorist camp in Jan 2007 killing 18 and arresting 17 but it doesnt make global news. I think that's not simply all about Chinese censorship though. Lack of publicity is also because some still like to promote insurgent propaganda that terrorism is only against the West, and only because of the West, and if only we were nicer to them these poor misunderstood, really quite adorable men would go away and not try to kill us or change our society and style of governance. But information warfare is another story.

Anyway, China has just announced that it is building 90 VLCC's (the largest crude oil carriers) so that it can make sure its fleet is owned and navigated by Chinese thus giving more confidence in stable supply in a time of war or fierce global energy competition.

China has about 25 of these enormous ships compared with Japan, Greece and Norway which have slightly bigger fleets. China is already the world's third biggest oil importer, behind the US and Japan, and its demand is not slowing either. And all this doesn’t take into India. With all these global trends, no matter what policies we have here with whichever government, our own lives by 2020 many reckon, will be quite different to now.