China will continue amassing crude oil in strategic and commercial reserves well into 2026, according to Frederic Lasserre, global head of research and analysis at commodity trading giant Gunvor.
After a slow start to the year, China began boosting its crude oil imports in March-April and has kept elevated import levels since then. The key driver has been crude stockpiling, not a major rebound in demand, according to analysts.
Higher Chinese purchases have helped support oil prices despite the OPEC+ production hikes and persistent concerns about the growth rate of global oil demand amid inconsistent U.S. trade policies and tariffs.
From March onwards, “we started to see a very impressive rate of stockpiling, like close to one million barrels per day,” Lasserre told the audience of the APPEC 2025 conference in Singapore hosted by Platts and S&P Global Commodity Insights.
The filling rate is about 60%, which suggests that China has room for additional stockpiling of inventories, said Lasserre, as carried by Reuters.
Unlike the United States, China, the world’s top crude importer, does not report inventories and analysts are looking at overall supply and refinery processing rates to estimate how much crude is going into strategic or commercial reserves and how much is being processed into fuels.
China started accelerating crude oil imports in March and April, but the increased purchases weren’t necessarily a sign of recovering fuel demand in the world’s biggest crude importer. It’s more likely that Chinese refiners have been aggressively stockpiling cheaper crude amid uncertainties about sanctioned barrels going forward.
Analysts expect strong Chinese imports and refining output to have continued through the summer amid peak travel season and state-held refiners rebuilding fuel stocks.
The aggressive crude stockpiling in China appeared to continue in August. The 49.49 million tons of crude imports, or 11.65 million barrels per day (bpd), rose by 0.8% in August from a year earlier and by 4.9% compared to July this year, customs data showed on Monday.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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