Filling China's tanks

Beijing is working hard to put its SPR expansion programme back on track

The US may be selling off a substantial amount of its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), but China is determined to keep building up its emergency stores of oil. As the White House calls for the sale of 270m barrels of crude from its SPR next year, which would mean the closure of two of four sites on the Gulf Coast, China is pushing ahead with the second stage of a long-term storage plan, now due for completion in 2020, after falling behind schedule. As a study published in July by China's National Natural Science Foundation points out, this would see the construction of eight new sites located in inland regions, most of them near geographically convenient ports serving areas of high dem