China has pushed back completion of its emergency petroleum stockpiles to beyond the original 2020 deadline. The world’s largest energy consumer will finish construction of the second phase of its strategic oil reserves and begin preliminary work on additional sites by 2020, according to the 2016-2020 Five Year Plan released over the weekend. The country’s previous plans called for three phases to be completed by the end of the decade. “China may have reached its current storage capacity limit and it takes time to build up new” reserve sites, said Lu Wang, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Hong Kong. “Some SPR will be stored underground, which might take more time to build and cause the delay.” China took advantage of falling crude prices last year to build up its emergency reserves, helping to partially mop up a global oil glut. The country increased imports by 8.8 percent to […]