From OilPrice, August 8:
China has been trying to cool surging commodity prices by releasing inventory from its strategic reserves. The higher prices of oil, coal and metals have raised manufacturing costs, slowed down factory activity growth, and increased inflation in the world’s largest commodity consumer. Every week since April this year, Chinese authorities have announced measures to control the price of many commodities, including energy and metals.
With all those auctions and reported releases of crude and coal from China’s strategic reserves, the market is dying to know how much the world’s top consumer has secretly stockpiled in recent years.
China is not forthcoming in reporting strategic reserves of anything, including crude oil. So, in most cases, analysts are playing a game of guesstimates, calculations, and conclusions from past behavior to try to measure Chinese stockpiles of strategic commodities, such as crude oil, coal, copper, zinc, and cobalt.
Knowing how much crude oil and metals China may have stashed could be particularly useful for commodity market analysts and traders.
Some of them have made estimates.
According to consultancy Energy Aspects, China is forecast to have 220 million barrels of crude oil in its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), covering 15 days of China’s crude demand. Total crude stockpiles, including commercial inventories, are enough to cover 60 days of Chinese oil demand, Energy Aspects analyst Liu Yuntao told Reuters
That’s lower than the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recommendation, which calls for all members to hold a minimum of 90 days of crude reserves. But China is not a member of the IEA.
For metals, Chinese strategic reserves are seen at 1.5 million to 2 million tons of copper, 800,000-900,000 tons of aluminum, and 250,000-400,000 tons of zinc, according to analysts quoted by Reuters. China is also thought to have around 7,000 tons of cobalt, a key metal used in battery manufacturing....
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