china is stockpiling oil

in my opinion one of the best ways for china to spend all their quickly depreciating us $! but on the other hand it would be to the benefit of china when they let their yuan trade without the peg. the filling of the oilreserves would be much much cheaper....... who thinks oil is a bubble?

das beste was china mit all den schnell fallenden us $ machen kann. allerdings sollten die sich bald überlegen die bindung an den $ endgültig abzulegen. das auffüllen der reserve dürfte dann erhebliich biller werden....wer denkt noch immer das ne blase ist?

The Asian powerhouse quietly begins to stockpile crude

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8361232

PREDICTING China's impact on global oil demand is difficult enough at the best of times. But now that it is beginning to store emergency supplies of oil in “strategic reserves”, uncertainty is all the greater. It was not until October that China confirmed reports that it had begun filling a newly built reserve depot in Zhenhai in the eastern province of Zhejiang at least two months earlier. Its plans are shrouded in secrecy.

Given the likely scale of China's reserve build-up, this uncertainty matters a lot to the market. In the course of its transformation from Asia's biggest exporter of oil two decades ago to its second-biggest importer now, China has become increasingly anxious. Economic planners worry about the impact of oil-price surges on growth. Security planners fret that around half of the imported oil comes from an unstable Middle East and that the oil is mostly shipped along sea lanes through south-east Asia that could be blocked by America. China wants enough oil in hand to ensure that America cannot hold it to ransom. .....

State-controlled newspapers have reported that deliveries began in August when a Russian tanker docked in nearby Ningbo with crude for storage at Zhenhai. Other reports say crude may have been delivered before this. Some 3m barrels are reported to have been stored so far. This is around 10% of Zhenhai's total capacity, which itself is the equivalent of less than five days of China's crude-oil consumption. Officials have said China's aim is to store 100m barrels within five years.

The government has estimated that the total cost of building the bases and filling them will be 100 billion yuan ($12.7 billion) by 2020. But since it has apparently not decided how much oil it plans to store, this figure can be only a guess. A senior planning official last year said there were calls for reserves equal to between 90 and 120 days of consumption. This is a lot of oil. China's consumption last year of over 300m tonnes (see chart above) is expected to increase by around 50% by 2020.

The recent drop in oil prices has prompted speculation that China might accelerate the build-up.

..... A Chinese official, confirming that oil had been stored at Zhenhai, said only that this was the first step on a journey of 10,000 miles.