China doubled the fill rate at its strategic and commercial inventories in Q1 2020, taking advantage of the low oil prices and somewhat supporting the oil market amid crashing demand by diverting more imports to storage, rather than outright slashing crude imports. According to estimates from Reuters columnist Clyde Russell based on official Chinese data, between January and March, nearly 2 million bpd of oil imports were not processed by refiners. To compare, the estimates for Q1 2019 show that out of the total Chinese crude oil availability—including imports and domestic oil production – just 1.07 million bpd were held back and not processed by refiners. The difference between the Q1 2020 and the Q1 2019 unprocessed crude suggests that this year China has doubled the rate at which it has been filling its strategic and commercial inventories, Russell argues. China doesn’t report inventories, so the rate at which […]