China appears to be stockpiling crude oil at a faster pace than the market had expected, taking advantage of low prices but perhaps also pulling forward its demand for imported crude. While China doesn’t disclose the amount of crude flowing into strategic storage, an estimate can be made simply by subtracting refinery runs from the total amount of oil available from both imports and domestic output. Domestic crude production dropped 5.6 percent in April from a year earlier to 16.59 million tonnes, equivalent to about 4.04 million barrels per day (bpd), the National Bureau of Statistics said on May 14. This was the lowest rate on a daily basis since July 2013, and it brought the decline in the first four months of the year to 2.7 percent from […]