Posted on 03/10/2009 12:49:44 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
China has filled all four of its state-owned emergency oil reserve tanks to the brim and should now invest in oil tankers to add more to inventories while oil prices are low, a senior industry executive said on Monday in a rare acknowledgement of Beijing's secretive oil inventories.
Coupled with data last week showing a one-third rise in commercial crude oil stockpiles last year, the admission suggests that a large share of of China's oil import growth last year was pumped directly into storage, and could be relied upon quickly to soften any demand recovery or if prices should rise.
It also backs up speculation that the world's No. 2 energy user has been making good use of oil's $100 price fall to boost supplies while demand falters in an unfolding economic crisis.
China Shipping (Group) Co President Li Shaode told Reuters on Monday that he had proposed that the government use some of its foreign exchange reserves on floating oil storage.
"The four onshore reserve bases have been fully filled, so we need to invest urgently in floating storage," Li said on the sidelines of the country's annual parliament.
The first set of China's strategic oil reserves, which can hold about 100 million barrels, were built over the past two years, but data on their status is considered a state secret and information about their operations or tank levels is scarce.
China plans to build a second-phase strategic reserve that will nearly triple the first batch to 280 million barrels by 2011, and industry executives have said the current storage capacity has already become a hurdle to bringing in more imports.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Imagine that! A country actually planning ahead on oil supplies!
Does this mean they aren’t going to go completely to wind and solar while they put coal and oil out of business???
Well, I guess they know we’ll always need the erf’s second most plentiful liquid.
Chances are they have well paid and highly respected engineers working day and night researching and experimenting.
Meanwhile we drug and bully our nerds and geeks.
Hey I resemble that remark.
You’re a geek
In the years ahead, it’s going to be hard for the Chinese to compete with their neighbors when they’re buying oil at $50 from government reserves while market prices have crashed into the low $20’s. Throughout history, the problem with the Chinese government is that it has consistently tried to outsmart the market, and just as consistently, lost.
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