I N AMER I S AMER I EUROPE I AFRICA I M EAST I ASIA-PAC I GLOBAL I

HONG KONG ISLAND

Trams at Wan Chai

Brief history of the territory (China)

Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of the PRC) is one of 2 such regions of China (the other being Macau). It lies on the southern coast of China at the Pearl River Estuary. It borders the province of Guangdong to the north.

Human inhabitants in Hong Kong have been recorded form 35,000 years ago. From 214 BC the island was run by a series of Chinese dynasties until the First Opium War (1839–42) when, following the treaty of Nanking made with the Qing Dynasty, it became a UK Crown Colony.

Kowloon Peninsula was incorporated into the Colony in 1860 and a 99-year lease for the New Territories was negotiated in 1898. Japan occupied Hong Kong from late 1941 to mid-1945.

After World War 2 the territory was rapidly industrialised. In 1983 it was reclassified as a British Dependent Territory and the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration provided for transfer back to China. This happened in 1997 under the principle of one country, two systems.

Protests regarding the terms of Chinese rule have occurred. The so-called Umbrella Revolution began in 2014 and sometimes violent arguments about legal rights returned in 2019 which had a serious effect on the territory’s economy (later over-shadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic).

Hong Kong is a global trade hub (with a free market economy) and financial centre and, up to 2019, was the world's number one tourist destination city.

Oil and gas summary

Hong Kong is surrounded by the South China Sea on the east, south, and west.The territory consists of Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, the New Territories and over 200 offshore islands, of which the largest is Lantau Island. Much of the terrain is hilly or mountainous with steep slopes so that less than 25% is developed.The highest elevation is at Tai Mo Shan at 957m.

Southeastern China is comprised of 3 crustal blocks, the North China Block, the Yangtze Block and the Cathaysia Block which collided through continent to continent collision in the Pre-Cambrian to form part of the Eurasian continent. Hong Kong lies on the southern edge of the Cathaysia Block. The present-day tectonic setting is a passive margin with no plate boundary along the edge of the continental platform

Hong Kong is composed of Mesozoic volcanics and granite over 85% of its land area, surrounded by late Palaeozoic non-marine and shallow marine meta-sediments in the northeast and northwest. Some Mesozoic pre-volcanic sedimentary rocks are also present comprising Early and Middle Jurassic sandstones, siltstones, and mudstones that were deposited in a shallow marine environment. However, volcanic and plutonic rocks predominate. These are of Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous age which were emplaced during rifting of the South China Sea.

Limited sediments were deposited after the rifting stage comprising non-marine red beds and evaporites in fault-controlled basins. In this environment Globalshift considers Hong Kong, without access to offshore waters further out than 5.6 kms, to have no oil and gas potential. No exploration wells have ever been drilled

China owns the offshore seas surrounding the island and pipes gas into Hong Kong from fields in the South China Sea (Pearl River Mouth and Yinggehai Basins).

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HONG KONG

Map and Territorial Flag

North Asia

Capital

Population

Land area (sq kms)

Oil prod (000s b/d)

Gas prod (bcm/yr)

Oil cons (000s b/d)

Gas cons (bcm/yr)

Hong Kong

7.2 mm

1,054

None

None

344

2.6

Government

Hong Kong is autonomous. Its political and judicial systems are supposed to operate independently of those of mainland China except in defence and foreign affairs.

The Chief Executive remains an appointed rather than democratic role.

There is no department of government in Hong Kong responsible for oil and gas resources.

The Environment Bureau is an executive agency responsible for environmental protection, including oversight of the electricity sector.

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