The National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, said gasoline prices would rise by $46.55 a ton and diesel prices by $45 a ton.

The NDRC said the price hike, announced Tuesday, was intended to restrain increases in the country's oil consumption while boosting energy conservation. It estimated that China's dependence on imported oil is likely to hit 55 percent by the end of this year, from 33 percent in 2009.

The hike follows an earlier NDRC announcement on Tuesday that China's apparent oil consumption -- domestic production plus imports minus exports -- rose 15.2 percent year on year to 20.07 million tons in November.

"It is a choice made for the general economy and long-term development," the director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University told People's Daily Online. "The purpose is to further reform the price-forming mechanism of resources and restrain excessive growth of domestic demand for refined oil."

The price hike "was unexpected, but reasonable," Ding Shaoheng, an analyst at PetroChina's research unit, told Xinhua, China's state-owned news agency.

Beginning in 2009, the Chinese government adopted an oil pricing mechanism whereby the NDRC adjusts the country's retail fuel prices when the international crude oil price changes by more than 4 percent over 22 consecutive working days.

International oil prices have increased by more than 8 percent in the past two months.

The fuel hike comes as China faces rising inflation, after the country's consumer price index rose 5.1 percent in November, a 28-month high. Yet officials said the fuel increase wouldn't further worsen inflation.

Liu Zhenqiu, vice director of the NDRC's price department, said the fuel hike had been postponed after considering "the current consumer price level and the overall supply and demand condition in the domestic oil market," noting that China's fuel prices were not closely following international pricing trends, China Daily reports.

Public transportation systems wouldn't be allowed to raise fuel surcharges as a result of the nationwide fuel hike, the NDRC said.

The International Energy Agency said in a July report that China had surpassed the United States as the world's largest energy consumer.

It predicts China's hunger for energy will rise by 75 percent until 2035, when it will account for more than one-third of global demand.

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