Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339

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Structural Change and Economic Dynamics

journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/sced

Research on dynamic relationship between natural gas consumption and

economic growth in China

Zhi-Guo Li ∗ , Han Cheng, Tian-Yao Gu

China University of Petroleum(East), Qingdao, 266580, Shandong, China

article info abstract

Article history: As the third-largest natural gas consumption market, natural gas is of great significance to the economic growth and structure
Received 26 January 2018 of China. The promotion of natural gas will greatly change the production in every industry directly or indirectly. Based on
Received in revised form 7 October 2018 the modified Cobb-Douglas function, this paper established the panel data from 30 provinces of 2000–2014 to study the
Accepted 21 November 2018 Available online
relationship through panel quantile regres-sion. The panel quantile results proved that the higher level of economy, the greater
22 November 2018
the marginal effect of natural gas is on economic growth; then considering the different economy scale of provinces, the panel
data is divided into three groups, the results have drawn the same conclusion. Thus, measures to develop natural gas and
Keywords:
reform gas market have been put forward, including deepening market-oriented reform of natural gas system, perfecting the
Natural gas consumption
Economic growth construction and management of pipeline transportation and encouraging the consumption of natural gas.
Marginal effect
Dynamic association
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
According to United Nations data platform, the total green-house gas
emissions ratio of China to the world has been increased rapidly from 2000,
and the CO2 emissions of China has reached 10,249,460,000 tons in 2013,
which accounts for 28.6 percent of total world emissions. Faced with the
increasing pressure of reduc-ing carbon emissions, the reform in energy
utilization is urgent and inevitable; while maintaining economic growth,
decreasing carbon emissions through the adjustment of energy input is
effective and practicable. Compared with other primary energy, natural gas
has been proved to be the optimal choice to achieve such transition
¨ On the other hand, according to the ranking of PIW, the top 50 have
because of its low-carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the 13th Five-
¨
new proven geological reserves has been more than 500 billion cubic meters
for 14 years. Moreover, Zhang Kang et al. (2015) con-cluded that, in the last
decade the untapped reserves of natural gas in China have obviously
increased, the undeveloped rate of geo-logical reserves has obviously
increased, and the development of natural gas in China lags behind the
exploration, implying the great potential to the natural gas supply (Kang and
Tiejun, 2015). And this case can be explained in technical and managerial
aspects (Li et al., 2018a; 2018b), the complicated gasification process could
block fil-ters causing technical problems and the market status limited the
demand and exploitation (Li et al., 2018a).
occupied 82% of the total reserves and 53% of the total production, the

Year National Planhas pointed out that it is necessary to vigorously develop
natural gas resources and increase its proportion in pri-mary energy
consumption, which should play an important role in energy transformation.
In the past decade, China has become the second-largest econ-omy and
the third-largest natural gas consumer market in the world, the natural gas
consumption and economic growth in China developed sustainably, steadily
and rapidly with influencing each other. According to data from China
Ministry of Land and Resources, the natural gas reserves of China continues
to grow rapidly, the
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: upcguo0316@126.com (Z.-G. Li).
privilege of monopolists in upstream exploitation have a negative effective on
gas industry. Monopoly enterprises take strong control to the upstream, and
large companies occu-pied the main position in the downstream. There is the
similar situation in China, the natural gas reserves of the three major oil
enterprises (PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOCC) account for about 98 of our total
reserves. At present, the oligopoly patter has established in upstream
(exploration and development) and the middle (pipeline transition);
downstream (distribution and sales) are mainly in the charge of regional gas
companies, which has caused resources waste, great producing cost, low
efficiency and high price. There-fore, to figure out whether there is a
cointegration relationship between natural gas consumption and economy and
how to facili-tate economy through the input of natural gas, the analysis
between

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.strueco.2018.11.006
0954-349X/© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.
0/).
 Z.-G. Li et al. / Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339
Fig. 1. GDP, Natural Gas Consumption and Growth Rate.
natural gas consumption and economic growth in China could be useful to
improve natural gas market and formulate the energy strategy to develop the
low-carbon economy.
2. Literature review
Researches on the relationship between natural gas consump-tion and
economic growth has emerged recently. Shahbaz et al. (2014) established an
autoregressive distribution lag model includ-ing labor inputs, natural gas
consumption and other multivariate variables, proved that natural gas
consumption did affect economic growth (Shahbaz et al., 2014). In the long
term, Ozturk and Al-Mulali (2015) furtherly pointed out the existence of two-
way causal relationship between the natural gas consumption and economic
growth (Ozturk and Al-Mulali, 2015. Furuoka (2016) expanded the scope of
research and concluded that there is a one-way causal rela-tionship between
natural gas and economic growth in China, while Japan has a two-way causal
relationship (Furuoka, 2016). Based on the neoclassical economic growth
model, Balitskiy et al. (2016) selected panel data from 26 countries in EU
from 1997 to 2011 and studyed the relationship between energy efficiency,
natural gas consumption and economic growth (Balitskiy et al., 2016). Lee
and Chang, (2018), (Lee and Chang, 2018), Narayan et al. (2007), (Narayan
et al., 2007) and Bartleet and Gounder, (2010), (Bartleet and Gounder, 2010)
also studied the relationship between them.
In domestic related research, Jun (2015) established the error correction
model using natural gas consumption index, coal con-sumption index and
economic growth index, proved the long-term equilibrium between coal and
natural gas consumption with eco-nomic growth (Jun, 2015). Xuna and
Chuanbo (2010) based on the analysis of the eight major economic regions in
China, held that the impact of energy consumption on economic growth is
different due to the differences in economy (Xuna and Chuanbo, 2010).
Muqiang (2013) analyzed the relationship between energy consumption and
economic growth using the time series data of ASEAN from 1997 to 2007,
and proved energy consumption is the Granger cause of economic growth
(Muqiang, 2013). More specifically, Li, (2012) verified the existence of a
cointegration relationship between the two based on the data from 1949 to
2010 in the United States (Li, 2012). An-bing (2013) verified the
cointegration relationship between natural gas consumption and economic
growth in China from 1991 to 2011 by using the cointegration theory and the
error correction model, and concluded that the consumption of natural gas in
China is a Granger cause of economic growth (An-bing, 2013).
From literature researches, to study the relationship between natural gas
consumption and economic growth, most scholar mainly focus on empirical
results using empirical model and data, and hold that natural gas consumption
has significant influence on facilitating economic growth and natural gas
consumption is a Granger cause of economic growth, lacking of the
illustrations
335
about action mechanism between them. For empirical model, time series
model and panel model are mainly chosen, all of which perform ordinary
linear regression on variables, while when the economic growth rate changes,
and there may be a dynamic equi-librium between the two. Therefore, this
paper firstly elaborated the interaction mechanism between natural gas
consumption and economic growth, and then introduced the quantile
regression method combining the quantile regression with the panel model to
analyze the relationship among the variables at different quan-tiles of the
dependent variable, which could be more reliable to analyze these dynamic
connections at different economy level.
3. Descriptive analysis of the relationship
In the past decade, natural gas consumption and economic development
have maintained a steady and rapid growth, as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 shows that natural gas consumption and economic growth have a
certain degree of synchronization. According to the fluctu-ation trend of
growth rate, it’s divided into two phases: The first phase is the period of
sustained high growth, from 2000 to 2007, the average annual growth rate of
natural gas consumption is 16.26%, and the average annual growth rate of
economic growth is 10.5%. The second phase is the period from 2008 to 2014
when natu-ral gas consumption and economic growth are gradually slowing
down. Affected by the financial crisis, the economic growth rate dropped to
7%; natural gas consumption growth rate also showed a downward trend,
although a slight rebound in 2011, but natural gas consumption growth rate in
2014 fell to its lowest point in 10 years. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude
that there is a syner-gistic relationship between natural gas consumption and
economic growth in China.
¨
In China, the development model of investment-driven and
¨
industrial-firsthas caused irrational energy structure and increas-ingly serious
environmental problems. Natural gas has become the best choice for
improving energy consumption structure due to its advantages of pollution-
free, abundant supply and mature technol-ogy. Which is of great significance
to the development of economy.
4. The transmission mechanism of natural gas
consumption on economic growth
This paper argues that the impact of natural gas consumption on economic
growth mainly in the following two aspects: price economy and structural
adjustment, as has shown in Fig. 2. Consid-ering the property of natural gas,
the consumption of which could play a significant role in economic growth.
As the energy input fac-tors in micro-level, the price of natural gas will
directly change the consumption and production of all industry, especially for
the secondary industry most of which are energy-intensive industry.
336 Z.-G. Li et al. / Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339

Fig. 2. The Transmission Mechanism of Natural Gas Consumption to Economic Growth.

As industrial materials of factory and the commodity of house-hold, dure to decrease carbon emissions and other pollutants. In the end, the
especially the price and access compared to other alternative energy, the industry production and economic structure will change by the transmission
promotion and utilization of natural gas could change the way people live and among industries, thus affecting economic growth all over the country.
produce. Furtherly, the development of nat-ural gas industry could change the
energy structure and industry structure, and then transferring to whole
economy.
5. Model building and data processing

4.1. Price economy 5.1. Economic model and data source

Compared with oil and coal, natural gas is disadvantageous in price. Once
the price of oil and coal has fallen, the production cost will directly increase
for those energy enterprises using nat-ural gas, which in turn will have a
negative effect on economic growth. What’s more, with the privilege of
mining and producing, the monopoly firms take a strong control of the
production and con-sumption of natural gas market in China. If their
monopoly profits can be reduced to make up for such price disadvantages, it
will greatly facilitate the industrial input and the daily consumption of natural
gas and optimize the energy structure with positive eco-nomic and social
effects. In addition, the government subsidies to promote the natural gas
greatly affect the government revenue and expenditure, further affecting the
ability to balance economy and market improvement.
4.2. Structural adjustment
As has known to us all, policies and measures will greatly orien-tate the
capital investment and the demand and supply on market, the development of
natural gas faces the same cases. The encour-agement and support from
government will directly and rapidly increase natural gas production, besides
the related services and technologies, which have a positive effect on the
overall economy. On the other side, with the popularization of natural gas, the
invest-ment and demand for fossil fuels will be reduced leading to the
production reduction in such industries, furthermore the transition of energy
structure which will have a negative effect on the econ-omy in short term. In
case of bankruptcy, these fossil fuel-intensive industries will devoted to
convert energy utilization and proce-
Based on the neoclassical economic growth theory, the expanded C–D
˛ ˇ
production function Y = AK L E (Zhaoning and Deshun, 2004) were
introduced. In addition, this paper mainly selects the data of 30 provinces and
cities in China from 2000 to 2014 (excluding Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Macao). All the data are from China Statistical Yearbook, China Energy
Statistical Year-book and Wande Database. Some missing data has been
estimated. In addition, the capital stock were adjusted with the constant price
of 2000 to eliminate the impact of price. Taking the gross domes-tic product
(GDP), investment in fixed assets (K), gas consumption (GAS) and
employment (L) as research variables, Stata13.0 was used to complete
empirical analysis.
In addition, in order to ensure the comparability of data and eliminate the
influence of heteroscedasticity, logarithmic transfor-mation are taken on all
variables:
ln y = ln a + ˛ ln k + ˇ ln l + ln e (1)
Where y represents the gross domestic product (GDP), k repre-sents
investment in fixed assets, l represents employment amount and e represents
natural gas consumption.
5.2. Panel data test
For the panel data, only the stationary panel can make the empir-ical
analysis effective, in order to avoid the pseudo regression and ensure the
stationary of panel data, unit root test is necessary to car-ried out. In this
paper, the LLC, Breintung and Fisher-ADF methods are selected, the test
results are shown in Table 1:

Table 1
Unit Root Test Result.

LLC test Breintung test Fisher-ADF test

variable
Statistic P-value Statistic P-value Statistic P-value

Level test LNgdp 0.87553 0.8094 7.41310 1.0000 53.9382 0.6956

LNk −1.29715 0.0973 14.6085 1.0000 34.9222 0.9960
LNl −0.88348 0.1885 5.74805 1.0000 31.8113 0.9990
LNgas −3.42053 0.0003 1.2582 0.8958 82.3975 0.0291
First order difference d(LNgdp) −2.46488 0.0069 −1.95408 0.0253 106.104 0.0002
d(LNk) −7.69595 0.0000 −4.70785 0.0000 116.246 0.0000
d(LNl) −8.90220 0.0000 −8.63319 0.0000 142.887 0.0000
d(LNgas) −9.58681 0.0000 −4.12275 0.0000 167.933 0.0000
 Z.-G. Li et al. / Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339 337

Table 2 uals (Jianping and Wanchuang, 2012). This paper also select this method here,
Panel Cointegration Test Result.
and the fixed effect panel data model are as follows:
Test Method Statistic The Value of Statistic P-Value

Kao test ADF −3.520236 0.0002 yit = ˛it + ˇ it + it , i = 1, · · · N, t = 1, · · · , T (2)

Pedroni Panel ADF-Statistic −4.380294 0.0000 First, in order to eliminate the influence of individual differ-ences in the
test Group ADF-Statistic −5.844497 0.0000 dependent variable, the estimated individual fixed effect is removed from the
dependent variable to obtain the mod-ified dependent variable. Then find the
corrected fitted regression equation as follows, and make quantile regression
Table 3
based on this equation:
Panel Model Test Result.

Test method The value of statistic P value

F test F(29,417)=181.02 0.0000 yit∗ = ˇ∗ it + it , i = 1, · · · N, t = 1, · · · , T (3)

Hausman test chi2(4)=44.71
According to Table 1, at the level test, the variables LNgdp, LNk and LNl
cannot reject the null hypothesis at 5% significance level in all methods,
suggesting the existence of the unit root and the sequence is not stable. And
for Lngas, the null hypothesis has also been rejected at 5% significance level
in LLC test and fisher-ADF test. Then unit test was applied furtherly at the
first-order difference and the null hypothesis could be rejected under the
significance level of 5%, so that it’s considerable that the variables could be
station-ary at the first order, and further panel cointegration tests can be
conducted.
In order to test whether there is a cointegration relationship between
natural gas consumption and economic growth in our country, Kao test and
Pedroni test are chosen as the differences of panel data, and the results are
shown in Table 2:
Both two methods rejected the null hypothesis that there is no
cointegration at a significant level of 5%. Therefore, there is a long-term co-
integration relationship between the consumption of natural gas (LNgas), the
investment in fixed assets (LNk), the num-ber of employed people (LNl) and
the economic growth (LNgdp).
In the short panel data, there are three regression models, mixed
regression model, fixed effect model and random effect model, which are
usually judged by the results of F test. In addition, the Hausman test could
determine whether the fixed effect model or the random effect model should
be adopted. The results are shown in Table 3:
According to the results in Table 3, the fixed effect model is finally
chosen to make regression in this paper.
5.3. Panel quantile regression analysis
In order to control the heterogeneity of individuals, quantile regression
was used to analyze the explanatory variables at each sub-site of explanatory
variables, and the marginal effects of vari-ables on each sub-component were
examined. Which were more significant. Jianping and Wanchuang, (2012)
proposed a two-stage panel data quantile regression method, which preserves
the orig-inal equation information to the maximum extent, and the most
0.0000
Furtherly, to analyze the marginal effect of natural gas con-sumption on
economic growth in different stages of economic development, the panel
quantile regression method is used in this paper. A representative 10-digit
median is selected for parameter estimation. Moreover, the bootstrap method
400 repeated sam-pling calculations, detailed parameter estimation results in
Table 4:
According to Table 4, the effect of capital on economic growth is much
larger than others, the elasticity coefficient of which (LNk) increases
gradually, indicating that as economy level becoming higher, the impact of
capital on economic growth expand contin-uously. In general, the higher level
of economic development, the higher efficiency of capital investment and
financial innovation is. Secondly, the elasticity coefficient of labor force tend
to decline with the increase of each quantile, which shows that the marginal
contribution of labor force on economic growth declines with the development
of economy. Ultimately, compared with capital and labor force, the coefficient
of natural gas consumption is the lowest among all quantiles, which means
that the marginal effect of natu-ral gas consumption on economic growth is
the smallest. However, the coefficient of natural gas consumption fluctuates
upward, and the marginal effect of natural gas on economic growth is more
and more significant. The higher the level of economic development, the
greater the marginal contribution of natural gas consumption to economic
growth is.
5.4. Comparison of different economic scales
Panel quantile regression has proved that the higher level of eco-nomic
development, the greater the marginal effect of natural gas consumption is,
but there are big differences in the economic scale among the 30 provinces
and cities in China. Therefore, it necessary to explained from different
economic scales furtherly. Firstly, using the coefficient of effect method, the
regional GDP of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2000 to 2014 are
dimensionalized. Git is used to denote the non-dimensionalized value of each
province and city. The calculation formula is as follows:
y y
it − min it
G = 1≤i≤30,1≤t≤15
it max yit − minyit × 40 + 60, i = 1 , (4)
1≤i≤30,1≤t≤15 1≤i≤30,1≤t≤15

important one is to eliminate the effect of fixed effects of individ- According to the standard of the efficiency coefficient range phase
(60,100), all the data are divided into three stages: high

Table 4
Panel Quantile Parameters Estimation Result.

Quantile
Var
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

LNk 0.5169 0.5183 0.5200 0.5243 0.5352 0.5308 0.5339 0.5390 0.5452
LNl 0.5298 0.5274 0.5156 0.4995 0.4908 0.4970 0.4975 0.4944 0.4850
LNgas 0.0341 0.0369 0.0388 0.0401 0.0392 0.0404 0.0406 0.0396 0.0418

C −0.0647 −0.0278 0.0734 0.1853 0.1898 0.1803 0.1826 0.2082 0.2833

Note: Parameter estimates are significant at 1% except for the 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 quantiles of the constant term C.
338 Z.-G. Li et al. / Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339

Table 5 distribution, government could relax quota limit gradually to create fair
Standard of Economic Scale.
market competition through the diversification of investment entities. To
Economic scale GDP dimensionless value break the high monopoly in exploration and produc-tion and pipeline
90 ≤ Git ≤ 100
transportation, the implementation of the third party access mechanism is
High level
medium 80 ≤ Git < 90 necessary to develop gradually mature competitive environment in the
Low level 60 ≤ Git < 80 industry.
Secondly, the natural gas industry should improve the pricing mechanism
to ensure the main position of market. Price reform is the only way to reform
Table 6
Panel Model Parameter Estimation Result. natural gas market; natural gas price must be able to reflect the relationships
of market resources, supply and demand, substitution and other aspects, as
Economic scale LNgdp Coef. Std. Err. t-Statistic P>|t|
well as the target user, user affordability and many other factors. What’s
Low level LNk 0.551276 0.017715 31.11912 0.0000 important is the flexible pricing mechanism should set up and change with the
LNl 0.362092 0.114523 3.161737 0.0020 mar-ket demand and supply meaning the government should no longer
LNgas 0.023105 0.013396 1.724807 0.0871
R-sq = 0.9912 C 1.058809 0.717220 1.476268 0.1424
intervene (Li et al., 2018b). The transparent, orderly and competi-tive natural
Medium LNk 0.538686 0.014983 35.95414 0.0000 gas market allowing the market itself to determine the operating price.
LNl 0.405475 0.072888 5.563011 0.0000
LNgas 0.033294 0.010591 3.143597 0.0019
R-sq = 0.9600 C 1.091584 0.526228 2.074356 0.0394
High level LNk 0.618716 0.022345 27.68942 0.0000
LNl 0.225363 0.091245 2.469877 0.0159
LNgas 0.050610 0.010702 4.728954 0.0000 6.2. Promoting the construction and management of pipeline
R-sq = 0.9846 C 1.940865 0.720821 2.692574 0.0088 transportation

As what has mentioned before, the exploitation of gas industry in China

level, medium level and low level of economic scale. The specific standards
are shown in Table 5:
So the three unbalanced panel data with high, medium and low economic
scale can be obtained and the specific parameter estima-tions are shown in
Table 6:
As can be seen from Table 6, the natural gas consumption coef-ficient in
the phase of medium and high-level are significant at the level of 5%, except
2
the significance at 10% of the low level. The indicator R is greater than 90%,
indicating that there is a marked positive correlation between natural gas
consumption and economic growth on different economic scales. Similarly,
with the gradual increase in the economic scale, the marginal effect of nat-
ural gas consumption on economic growth gradually increases.
To sum up, the promotion of natural gas energy is conducive to the
elimination of high-energy consumption and high pollution enterprises, which
could improve the whole efficiency of economy. As the level of economic
development continues to increase, the marginal effect of natural gas
consumption on economic growth is gradually increasing. Furthermore, the
higher the level of urban-ization, the more perfect the natural gas pipeline
network and supporting facilities, the stronger the environmental awareness,
the higher the utilization rate of natural gas consumption and the greater the
impact of natural gas consumption on economic growth.
6. Countermeasures and suggestions
In fact, there are many problems in the process of developing gas industry,
such as resources shortage, high dependence on for-eign suppliers and
insufficient storage and transportation capacity, the mismatched supervision
of government on the gas market and so on. There still is a long way to
establish the mutual and benign gas market, the current natural gas market
system in China has seriously hindered the development of the natural gas
industry and the expansion of the consumer market. The market-oriented
reform will realize a mature market with moderate competition and effective
supervision.
6.1. Deepening the market-oriented reform of nature gas system
As has been mentioned above, the natural gas industry in China is still
monopolistic in the fields of exploration, mining, pipeline transmission and
distribution. Firstly, the natural gas industry should liberalize the access
restrictions to the fields of mining and
lagged behind the exploration and demand, because the privilege of
oligopolists and backward pipeline facilities. Obviously, the storage and
transportation of natural gas industry is highly dependent on infrastructure,
which furtherly affect much on the peak shaving capacity of natural gas. The
pipe network determines market range, and the storage determines market
development, while natural gas infrastructure construction in China is far from
the competition conditions. As can be seen from experience of devel-oped
countries, the independence of the pipeline transportation from monopolistic
enterprises is effective to create the fair com-petition, requiring the
introduction of social capital to participate in the construction of natural gas
infrastructure. At the same time, government should strengthen the
management and supervision to natural gas industry, the trade associations
and manufacturers should be branded to do their duty, developing the
supervision system including government, industry associations and manufac-
turers to oversee and protect the natural gas industry reform and development.
6.3. Supporting natural gas consumption
While formulating the natural gas development strategy and guaranteeing
the balance between supply and demand in the nat-ural gas market, the
government should make overall plans for the economic benefits of natural
gas market development. More-over, furtherly adjust and improve natural gas
utilization policies, actively cultivate a healthy natural gas consumer market,
steadily expand the proportion of natural gas consumption in the energy
market, and increase natural gas consumption and the efficiency of utilization
and guide the rational use of natural gas consumption in various fields of
industry (Jun et al., 2016).
For natural gas power generation, industrial gas, transporta-tion gas and
other natural gas applications, the government should give some policy
support and incentives. Such as providing finan-cial benefits, the bank to give
low interest and discount loans; tax revenue, tax relief or even tax-free
concessions; financial aspects of natural gas applications to provide security
and subsidies, etc., thereby promoting the popularity of natural gas
consumption. Although the reform of the natural gas market will be difficult
and complicated, the natural gas market will play a great role in pro-moting
the development of natural gas industry and the economic growth of China.
 Z.-G. Li et al. / Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 49 (2019) 334–339
6.4. Upholding regulatory reform in nature gas industry
With the implementation of Market-Oriented pricing mecha-nism and the
liberalization of supply chain, the nature gas industry will burst into endless
vitality, along with a great many challenges. Since 1990s, the non-integrated
supply chain model of natural gas industry has emerged. The non-integrated
supply chain model of natural gas industry, allowing the buyers and sellers to
partici-pate in production, transportation, sales and other links, along with the
main difficulties and problems of natural gas supply chain in resource
allocation, pipe network construction and market supply. What’s more, there
will be more potential foreign suppliers with high-quality gas, more and more
illegal act will spill over under the stimulation of interest.
So that, the government should upholding the regulatory reform in nature
gas industry, and meet the changing regulatory require-ment. On the one
hand, the government should change the emphasis of supervision, try to
support the new competitors in financial and technical aspects, break down
industry barriers of existing enterprises. On the other hand, to keep a good
competitive environment, the unlawful act should be punished severely. Only
in this way, could China develop nature gas blossom and achieving national
energy security.
Funding
Supported by Shandong provincial Social Science Planning Project of
China “Research on the Growth Path of Employment in Shandong Province
under Carbon Constraints” (Grant NO. 17CQXJ02); Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Univer-sities “Research on the relationship between
industrial upgrading and employment adjustment in Qingdao under low
carbon back-ground” (Grant NO. 18CX04005B).
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