China is stockpiling cheap crude in reserves
The country has a long way to go to reach its 2020 Strategic Petroleum Reserve target
There is little doubt that China has used the steep drop in the oil price to accelerate the filling of its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a stockpile of crude set aside to help them ride out disasters or war. But putting a figure on exactly how much oil is in the SPR is notoriously difficult. Unlike other countries, Beijing considers its SPR a state secret and rarely discusses it. The government has said that it aims to hold the equivalent of 90 days of net imports, the standard for International Energy Agency member countries, by 2020. Assuming imports rise to around 8m barrels per day (b/d) by that time, the country would need an SPR holding of around 700m barrels to reach the target.
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