Till the end of 2016 China will import around 7 million barrels of oil per day

Almaty. April 19. Silkroadnews – Till the end of this year the Chinese oil companies will import about 7 million barrels of oil per day, TASS agency reports with reference to the website of the Chinese oil and gas company “Sinopec”.

“China continues buying oil to raise its strategic reserves. Such increase in the volume of import is also dictated by growing demand from the independent refining companies seeking to reap maximum benefits from the fall in raw material costs under constant petrol prices,” the statement said.

“With filling the tanks for the national strategic oil reserves storage there will be some decline in China’s oil consumption soon. However, the country is working to build new facilities for storage of strategic oil reserves, which will result in another wave of growing demand for oil from China in the second half of the year,” the company’s experts believe.

During the first quarter of 2016 China increased the volume of oil imports by 13% to 91.1 million tons on a year-on-year basis. At the same time the daily volume of oil imports amounted to 7.34 million barrels.

As China’s National Bureau of Statistics previously reported, by early 2015 China completed the filling of the first phase of the national strategic oil reserves in the amount of 12.5 million tons (93.5 million barrels). These reserves storage facilities are located in Zhejiang, Shandong and Liaoning. It is expected that by 2020 the volume of China’s strategic oil reserves will increase to 40 million tons (299 million barrels).