Asia States Add to Oil Stockpiles: WSJ

Asia’s oil-consuming countries, such as China, South Korea and India, take advantage of plunging oil price to add to their strategic petroleum reserves. Since these countries have millions of barrels of spare capacity. Analysts suggest that such purchases would help stabilize oil prices. Oil prices have recently recovered a little from the historical negative prices, but remain down by two thirds compared to the prices at the beginning of 2020. Although coronavirus greatly constrained private demand of oil, Asia’s countries might increase the national reserves to safeguard domestic industries. China’s state-owned oil enterprises have received approval for seven expansion projects capable of holding 26 million barrels in total. India planned to fill up its 39 million barrels strategic petroleum reserves by mid-May. Even so, the emergency oil stocks equivalent of both countries can only cover 80 and 11 days, respectively. Japan, the other economic engine of Asia, already has enough oil and has no plans to increase national reserves soon. – YaleGlobal