CHINA'S huge appetite for oil to power industry and its electricity generation is a commodity-market tectonic shift whose outcome and strategic implications are unclear. What is clear is that China is in a great hurry to close deals on long-term supply, including that of gas. There is also the trickier corollary to consider: Pipeline construction across international borders to reduce dependence on ocean supply routes that Beijing calculates can only get less secure. China is the second largest oil consumer after the United States, accounting for 40 per cent of the global increase in consumption since 2000. For a random...