Taking advantage of the low oil prices, China increased its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) by almost 14 percent between June 2016 and June 2017, according to data by its National Energy Administration (NEA). As oil prices increased in the third and fourth quarter this year, the pace of the Chinese state oil reserve stockpiling has eased, according to analysts cited by Reuters. China rarely releases figures about its strategic reserves, and the data announced today is the first in eight months. According to the NEA, China had 37.73 million tons of oil, equal to 275 million barrels, in nine bases by the middle of 2017, up from 33.25 million tons at end-June 2016. In the previous Chinese update on its SPR, in April 2017, China said it had added 9.34 million barrels of crude oil to its state reserves during the first half of 2016, equal to an average […]