China’s pace of strategic petroleum reserves growth slowed over mid-2016 to mid-2017, compared to the previous two years, in a sign that Beijing was comfortable in lowering its dependency on those reserves for energy security. The country did not bring any new SPR storage site on stream in that period. But the country’s implied crude stocks growth over the same period hit a record high, suggesting more crude barrels went into commercial storage. Some analysts expected China to need more crude to build its SPR in H2 2017, and also in 2018, because of more SPR storage sites coming online. PIRA Energy Group, a unit of S&P Global Platts, expects China to build 100,000 b/d of crude stocks for its SPR in 2018. The National Bureau of Statistics at the end of December said the country’s SPR had reached 37.73 million mt of crude as of mid-2017, or 276.56 […]