China’s days of supply<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u3088\u304f\u3042\u308b\u8cea\u554f<\/h2>\n2026\u5e74\u6642\u70b9\u3067\u3001\u4e2d\u56fd\u306e\u77f3\u6cb9\u8caf\u8535\u80fd\u529b\u306f\u3069\u308c\u304f\u3089\u3044\u306b\u306a\u308b\u306e\u304b\uff1f<\/h3>\n
Roughly 1.8 to 2.4 billion barrels, and the estimates genuinely disagree. Kayrros put above ground tank farm capacity at more than 1.8 billion barrels in mid 2024. Energy Aspects estimated about 2.0 billion barrels of total capacity in December 2025. S&P Global Commodity Insights reported in January 2026 that around 271 million barrels of new commercial capacity across eight sites would take the total above 2.39 billion barrels. The only official Chinese figure is 238 million barrels across nine strategic bases, published by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2017 and never updated.<\/p>\n
\u4e2d\u56fd\u306f\u5b9f\u969b\u306b\u3069\u308c\u304f\u3089\u3044\u306e\u77f3\u6cb9\u3092\u8caf\u8535\u3057\u3066\u3044\u308b\u306e\u304b\uff1f<\/h3>\n
\u304a\u3088\u305d12\u5104\uff5e15\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3002\u7c73\u56fd\u30a8\u30cd\u30eb\u30ae\u30fc\u60c5\u5831\u5c40\uff08EIA\uff09\u306f\u30012025\u5e7412\u6708\u6642\u70b9\u3067\u306e\u7dcf\u4fdd\u6709\u91cf\u3092\u7d0414\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3068\u898b\u7a4d\u3082\u3063\u3066\u304a\u308a\u3001\u305d\u306e\u3046\u3061\u7d043\u51046000\u4e07\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u304c\u653f\u5e9c\u4fdd\u6709\u3001\u7d0410\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u304c\u88fd\u6cb9\u6240\u5728\u5eab\u3092\u542b\u3080\u5546\u696d\u7528\u3067\u3042\u308b\u3002Kpler\u306f2025\u5e7412\u6708\u306b15\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u4ee5\u4e0a\u3068\u63a8\u5b9a\u3057\u3001Vortexa\u306f2026\u5e744\u6708\u306b\u5730\u4e0a\u539f\u6cb9\u306e\u8a18\u9332\u7684\u306a12\u51044000\u4e07\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3092\u8a18\u9332\u3057\u3001\u30d6\u30eb\u30fc\u30e0\u30d0\u30fc\u30b0\u306f2026\u5e746\u6708\u306b\u7d0412\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3068\u5831\u544a\u3057\u305f\u3002\u3053\u308c\u3089\u306e\u6570\u5024\u306e\u5dee\u306e\u5927\u90e8\u5206\u306f\u5b9a\u7fa9\u306b\u3088\u308b\u3082\u306e\u3067\u3001\u7279\u306b\u5730\u4e0b\u6226\u7565\u5099\u84c4\u304c\u5883\u754c\u5185\u306b\u3042\u308b\u304b\u3069\u3046\u304b\u306b\u3088\u308b\u3002.<\/p>\n
How long would China’s oil reserves last?<\/h3>\n
\u66f8\u985e\u4e0a\u306f\u7d043\u304b\u6708\u5206\u3002\u7dcf\u5728\u5eab\u304c\u7d0414\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u30012025\u5e74\u306e\u8f38\u5165\u91cf\u304c\u65e5\u91cf1160\u4e07\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3067\u3042\u308b\u3053\u3068\u3092\u8003\u3048\u308b\u3068\u3001\u5728\u5eab\u91cf\u306f\u7dcf\u8f38\u5165\u91cf\u306e\u7d04121\u65e5\u5206\u3001\u307e\u305f\u306f\u88fd\u6cb9\u6240\u306e\u51e6\u7406\u91cf\u3067\u3042\u308b\u65e5\u91cf1482\u4e07\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u306b\u5bfe\u3057\u3066\u7d0495\u65e5\u5206\u306b\u76f8\u5f53\u3059\u308b\u3002\u3053\u306e\u8a08\u7b97\u306f\u6211\u3005\u306e\u3082\u306e\u3060\u304c\u3001\u5728\u5eab\u91cf\u3092\u7d04100\u65e5\u5206\u3001\u3064\u307e\u308a\u8f38\u5165\u91cf\u306e3\u304b\u6708\u5f37\u3068\u72ec\u81ea\u306b\u7b97\u51fa\u3057\u305f\u30b1\u30a4\u30ed\u30b9\u6c0f\u3068\u30b8\u30e7\u30f3\u30fb\u30b1\u30f3\u30d7\u6c0f\u306b\u3088\u3063\u3066\u3082\u88cf\u4ed8\u3051\u3089\u308c\u3066\u3044\u308b\u3002\u91cd\u8981\u306a\u6ce8\u610f\u70b9\u306f\u3001\u3053\u308c\u3089\u306f\u66f8\u985e\u4e0a\u306e\u5728\u5eab\u65e5\u6570\u3067\u3042\u3063\u3066\u3001\u751f\u5b58\u65e5\u6570\u3067\u306f\u306a\u3044\u3068\u3044\u3046\u3053\u3068\u3060\u3002\u306a\u305c\u306a\u3089\u3001\u30bf\u30f3\u30af\u306e\u5e95\u3084\u7a3c\u50cd\u5bb9\u91cf\u3092\u7269\u7406\u7684\u306b\u5f15\u304d\u51fa\u3059\u3053\u3068\u306f\u3067\u304d\u305a\u3001\u5f15\u304d\u51fa\u3057\u53ef\u80fd\u306a\u5272\u5408\u3092\u516c\u8868\u3059\u308b\u8005\u3082\u3044\u306a\u3044\u304b\u3089\u3067\u3042\u308b\u3002.<\/p>\n
\u4e2d\u56fd\u306f\u77f3\u6cb9\u3092\u5730\u4e0b\u306b\u8caf\u8535\u3057\u3066\u3044\u308b\u306e\u304b\uff1f<\/h3>\n
\u306f\u3044\u3001\u305d\u3057\u3066\u307e\u3059\u307e\u3059\u5897\u3048\u3066\u3044\u307e\u3059\u3002\u907c\u5be7\u7701\u9326\u5dde\u5e02\u3001\u5c71\u6771\u7701\u9ec4\u5cf6\u5e02\u3001\u5e83\u6771\u7701\u6075\u5dde\u5e02\u3068\u6e5b\u6c5f\u5e02\u306b\u306f\u3001\u7a3c\u50cd\u4e2d\u306e\u5730\u4e0b\u539f\u6cb9\u8caf\u8535\u65bd\u8a2d\u304c4\u30f6\u6240\u3042\u308a\u3001\u5408\u8a08\u5bb9\u91cf\u306f\u5c11\u306a\u304f\u3068\u30821\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3067\u3059\u3002Kayrros\u793e\u306f\u5730\u4e0b\u8caf\u8535\u5bb9\u91cf\u3092\u7d041\u51043000\u4e07\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3068\u898b\u7a4d\u3082\u3063\u3066\u3044\u307e\u3059\u304c\u3001\u5145\u586b\u7387\u306f\u4e0d\u660e\u3067\u3059\u30025\u3064\u76ee\u306e\u5730\u4e0b\u7a7a\u6d1e\u306f\u6d59\u6c5f\u7701\u5be7\u6ce2\u5e02\u3067\u5efa\u8a2d\u4e2d\u3067\u30012023\u5e7412\u6708\u306b\u7740\u5de5\u3057\u30012026\u5e74\u672b\u9803\u306b\u5b8c\u6210\u4e88\u5b9a\u3067\u3059\u3002\u3053\u308c\u3089\u306f\u6c34\u3067\u5bc6\u9589\u3055\u308c\u305f\u786c\u5ca9\u306e\u7a7a\u6d1e\u3067\u3001\u5730\u8868\u304b\u3089200\u30e1\u30fc\u30c8\u30eb\u3082\u306e\u6df1\u3055\u306b\u3042\u308b\u3082\u306e\u3082\u3042\u308a\u307e\u3059\u30022026\u5e74\u306e\u8caf\u8535\u5bb9\u91cf\u5897\u52a0\u306e\u5927\u90e8\u5206\u306f\u5730\u4e0b\u3067\u884c\u308f\u308c\u3001\u7279\u306b\u798f\u5efa\u7701\u3067\u9855\u8457\u3067\u3059\u3002.<\/p>\n
\u306a\u305c\u4e2d\u56fd\u306f\u77f3\u6cb9\u57cb\u8535\u91cf\u306e\u6570\u5024\u3092\u516c\u8868\u3057\u306a\u3044\u306e\u304b\uff1f<\/h3>\n
Because it treats stocks of crude and refined products, both commercial and strategic, as a state secret. The last official capacity disclosure was in 2017 and there have never been official inventory figures. The analyst John Kemp’s assessment is that the secrecy is understandable given China’s extreme vulnerability to any interruption of imports, and that there is no benefit in sharing inventory levels with potential adversaries. Analysts reconstruct the numbers two ways, through a supply balance of output plus imports minus refinery runs, and through satellite monitoring of floating tank roofs. Neither method can see inside a rock cavern.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u4e2d\u56fd\u306f\u7d0418\u5104\uff5e24\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u306e\u539f\u6cb9\u8caf\u8535\u80fd\u529b\u3092\u6709\u3057\u3001\u5b9f\u969b\u306b\u7d0412\u5104\uff5e15\u5104\u30d0\u30ec\u30eb\u3092\u8caf\u8535\u3057\u3066\u3044\u308b\u3002\u672c\u8cc7\u6599\u3067\u306f\u3001\u3053\u308c\u3089\u306e\u8caf\u8535\u65bd\u8a2d\u3001\u5ca9\u76e4\u7a7a\u6d1e\u3001\u8caf\u8535\u30ec\u30d9\u30eb\u3001\u305d\u3057\u3066\u539f\u6cb9\u304c\u5b9f\u969b\u306b\u3069\u308c\u304f\u3089\u3044\u306e\u671f\u9593\u8caf\u8535\u3067\u304d\u308b\u304b\u306b\u3064\u3044\u3066\u3001\u305d\u308c\u305e\u308c\u306e\u6570\u5024\u306e\u6839\u62e0\u3092\u660e\u8a18\u3057\u3066\u8a73\u8ff0\u3059\u308b\u3002.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":3689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"p54_article_data":"{\"meta\":{\"kicker\":\"Insight \u00b7 Energy Security\",\"topics\":[\"Analysis\",\"Policy\"],\"title\":\"How Much Oil Can China Actually Store? Capacity in 2026\",\"dek\":\"Not how fast China fills, not why the estimates disagree. This dossier is about the steel and the rock: how many barrels of physical storage China has built, how full those tanks are, where the caverns are, and how long the oil would actually last. In 2026 that stopped being an academic question.\",\"date\":\"14 July 2026\",\"readTime\":\"12 min read\",\"author\":\"Project 54, Research & Strategy\"},\"quickAnswer\":{\"q\":\"How much oil storage capacity does China have?\",\"a\":\"China has roughly 1.8 to 2.4 billion barrels of total crude storage capacity in 2026, and the spread is real, not resolvable from public data. Kayrros estimated more than 1.8 billion barrels of tank farm capacity in mid 2024. Energy Aspects put total capacity at about 2.0 billion barrels in December 2025. S&P Global Commodity Insights reported in January 2026 that around 271 million barrels of new commercial capacity across eight sites would take the total above 2.39 billion barrels. Actual fill is roughly 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrels. The only official capacity figure China has ever published is 238 million barrels across nine strategic bases, from the National Bureau of Statistics in 2017. There are zero official inventory figures. Every current number is an estimate produced by an outside analyst.\"},\"takeaways\":[\"Total capacity is an estimate with a 600 million barrel spread, wider than the entire US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 1.8bn barrels per Kayrros, 2.0bn per Energy Aspects, above 2.39bn per S&P Global after the 2026 build.\",\"Actual fill is roughly 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrels. The EIA put total holdings at about 1.4 billion barrels in December 2025, of which around 360 million barrels is government held. That implies tanks are somewhere around 55 to 65 percent full, which is our arithmetic on their figures, not a published number.\",\"Only one official number exists. The National Bureau of Statistics disclosed 238 million barrels across nine bases in 2017 and has published nothing since. China treats crude and product stocks as a state secret.\",\"Satellites can see tank tops, not rock. Four underground cavern sites hold at least 100 million barrels, with a fifth under construction at Ningbo. Kayrros puts underground capacity at around 130 million barrels with an unknown fill rate. That is a permanent blind spot in every estimate.\",\"The reserve was stress tested in 2026 and it held, but not on its own. When Hormuz disruption cut imports from 11.39 million barrels a day in February to about 6.36 million in May, stock draws of around 1 million barrels a day covered only about a third of the shortfall. Run cuts, export curbs, record domestic output and EV substitution did the rest.\",\"On paper the stockpile is worth about 95 to 121 days of cover. That is days on paper, not days of survival, because tank bottoms and working volume cannot be drawn. Nobody publishes the drawable fraction.\"],\"sections\":[{\"id\":\"sec1\",\"q\":\"How many barrels of storage has China actually built?\",\"h\":\"Three credible estimates, a 600 million barrel spread\",\"p\":[\"Start with the honest position. There is exactly one official Chinese capacity disclosure in existence: 238 million barrels across nine storage bases, published by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2017 and never updated. Everything else in this dossier is an outside estimate, and we attribute every one of them.\",\"Kayrros estimated more than 1.8 billion barrels of above ground tank farm capacity in mid 2024. Energy Aspects put total storage capacity at about 2.0 billion barrels in December 2025, with a possible 260 million barrels to be added during 2026. S&P Global Commodity Insights<\/a> reported in January 2026 that roughly 271 million barrels of new commercial crude capacity across eight sites would arrive in 2026, much of it underground and notably in Fujian, taking the total above 2.39 billion barrels.\",\"That is a spread of around 600 million barrels between the low and high estimate. To calibrate how large that is: it is bigger than the entire United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Anyone quoting a single confident number for China's storage capacity is not telling you something the data supports.\",\"On the build itself, a Reuters analysis in October 2025<\/a> counted 169 million barrels across 11 new sites under construction by Sinopec, CNOOC and others through 2025 and 2026, of which 37 million barrels was already built. Named projects included two inland sites in Shaanxi totalling 11 million barrels and a 20 million barrel Sinopec facility on Hainan. Reuters was explicit that its list may not be comprehensive, because of Chinese secrecy. For scale, Vortexa and Kpler estimate that 180 to 190 million barrels of capacity was added across the whole of 2020 to 2024. The 2025 to 2026 build alone nearly matches the previous five years.\"],\"table\":{\"cols\":[\"Measure\",\"Figure\",\"Source and date\"],\"rows\":[[\"Official strategic reserve capacity\",\"238 million barrels across 9 bases\",\"National Bureau of Statistics, 2017. The only official figure ever published\"],[\"Above ground tank farm capacity\",\"More than 1.8 billion barrels, estimate\",\"Kayrros, mid 2024\"],[\"Total storage capacity\",\"About 2.0 billion barrels, estimate, plus a possible 260m added in 2026\",\"Energy Aspects, December 2025\"],[\"Total capacity after the 2026 build\",\"Above 2.39 billion barrels, after 271m barrels across 8 new commercial sites\",\"S&P Global Commodity Insights, January 2026\"],[\"Underground cavern capacity\",\"At least 100 million barrels across 4 sites. Kayrros puts it at about 130m, fill rate unknown\",\"Baker Institute testimony via Ursa Space, 2024, and Kayrros, March 2025\"],[\"Under construction\",\"169 million barrels across 11 sites, 37m of it already built\",\"Reuters analysis, October 2025\"],[\"China's share of global onshore oil inventories\",\"31 percent, against 11 percent for the US and 8 percent for Japan\",\"Ursa Space Systems data via S&P Global, January 2026\"]]}},{\"id\":\"sec2\",\"q\":\"How full are those tanks?\",\"h\":\"Roughly 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrels, and the perimeter is doing the work\",\"p\":[\"The US Energy Information Administration<\/a> put China's total holdings at about 1.4 billion barrels as of December 2025, of which roughly 360 million barrels is government held and about 1.0 billion barrels is commercial, including refinery stocks. Kpler put the December 2025 total above 1.5 billion barrels. Vortexa recorded a record 1.24 billion barrels of above ground crude stocks in April 2026. Bloomberg reported commercial and strategic stockpiles at about 1.2 billion barrels in June 2026.\",\"Set those against capacity and you get a utilisation rate somewhere around 55 to 65 percent. That percentage is our arithmetic on the sourced figures, not a published number, and we flag it as such. OilX's independent read, that China's storage caverns are only half full, points the same way.\",\"The reason the estimates diverge by hundreds of millions of barrels is mostly definitional, and this is the single most useful thing to understand about the subject. The EIA counts both government and commercial stocks as strategic for China, because state owned companies were directed from 2024 to hold emergency oil inside commercial stockpiles. Kpler's narrower 799 million barrel figure and Vortexa's 735 million barrel figure exclude the underground strategic reserve entirely. Compare a broad perimeter with a narrow one and you generate a 700 million barrel error without anyone having made a mistake.\",\"There is also a structural reason the categories are blurring. A law passed in January 2026 codified government and commercial stocks within a single definition of national reserves, and requires companies to hold government supervised social responsibility reserves. All reserves are managed by divisions of the state oil firms under the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, which holds title. The line between commercial and strategic in China is now a legal fiction as much as a physical one.\",\"If you want the methodology argument in full, we have written it up separately in why every estimate of China's oil stockpile disagrees<\/a>.\"]},{\"id\":\"sec3\",\"q\":\"Where is the oil physically kept?\",\"h\":\"Coastal steel, and rock deep enough to survive a strike\",\"p\":[\"Most of China's storage is above ground, in coastal tank farms near ports and refineries. Those are the tanks a satellite can photograph, and they are the basis of nearly every published estimate.\",\"The underground picture is different. There are four in service underground crude storage sites, all near ports and demand hubs: Jinzhou in Liaoning, Huangdao in Shandong, and Huizhou and Zhanjiang in Guangdong, with combined capacity of at least 100 million barrels. A fifth cavern is under construction at Ningbo in Zhejiang, begun in December 2023, expected to complete around the end of 2026, and designed to last 50 years. Ursa Space Systems<\/a> has been tracking the build with radar satellite imagery, which works through cloud and at night.\",\"These are water sealed hard rock caverns, excavated in some cases up to around 200 metres below the surface. Gabriel Collins of the Baker Institute, in testimony to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, made the strategic point directly: some of China's in service underground oil storages sit under as much as 100 metres of earth and rock, placing them below the reach of nearly every strike munition deployed by any military globally, including the United States.\",\"The rationale is not only military. Caverns are cheaper than coastal above ground tanks once land cost is included, they have lower operating costs, they last longer and they need less maintenance. The 2026 additions are increasingly underground, notably in Fujian. And China has been pushing storage inland, away from its exposed eastern coasts, which is what the two Shaanxi sites are for.\",\"The consequence for anyone modelling China is stark. The single largest and fastest growing part of the reserve is the part that cannot be observed. Caverns have no floating roof to photograph. Underground fill is inferred, never measured.\"]},{\"id\":\"sec4\",\"q\":\"If China publishes nothing, how does anyone know?\",\"h\":\"Two methods, one shared blind spot\",\"p\":[\"China's government treats stocks of crude and products, commercial and strategic alike, as a state secret. Total inventories are not disclosed. The last official capacity update was 2017. As the energy analyst John Kemp puts it, the secrecy is understandable given the country's extreme vulnerability to any interruption of imports, and there is no benefit in sharing inventory levels with potential adversaries. It has nonetheless become one of the most important sources of uncertainty in forecasting the global oil market.\",\"Analysts reconstruct the number two ways, which is exactly why the estimates diverge.\",\"The first is the supply balance method. Implied stock change equals domestic output plus imports, minus refinery throughput, minus exports. Kemp's 2025 worked example<\/a>: domestic output of 216 million tonnes plus imports of 578 million tonnes gives 794 million tonnes available, while refineries processed only 738 million tonnes, leaving around 56 million tonnes unaccounted for, of which about 2 million was exported. That implies crude stocks rose by roughly 54 million tonnes, about 400 million barrels, or 1.1 million barrels a day across 2025.\",\"The second is satellite tank top monitoring. Geospatial analysis of the shadows cast by floating tank roofs gives a fill level per tank. Kayrros, Kpler, Vortexa and Ursa Space all work this way. Kayrros observed above ground stocks ranging from 850 million to a little over 1 billion barrels between 2016 and 2024.\",\"Both methods carry large error bars, and the EIA says so plainly: depending on the source used and the assumptions made, the range between different stock build estimates is 0.5 million barrels a day on average and can be as large as 1.1 million barrels a day. The uncertainty is roughly the size of the thing being measured.\",\"And both share the same blind spot. Rock caverns have no roof to photograph, and they do not show up separately in a national balance. Everything underground, 110 to 130 million barrels of capacity, is an assumption.\"]},{\"id\":\"sec5\",\"q\":\"How long would the oil actually last?\",\"h\":\"About three months on paper, and 2026 tested it\",\"p\":[\"Take the sourced inputs. China's 2025 crude imports averaged 11.6 million barrels a day. Refinery throughput ran at 14.82 million barrels a day across January to November 2025. Domestic crude production was 4.35 million barrels a day, reaching a record of about 4.5 million in the first quarter of 2026. Import dependence is around 70 percent of crude supply. Total stocks stand at about 1.4 billion barrels, of which around 360 million barrels is government held.\",\"The arithmetic, which is ours and not a published figure: 1,400 million barrels divided by 11.6 million barrels a day of imports gives about 121 days of gross import cover. Against refinery runs of 14.82 million barrels a day it gives about 95 days. The government held portion alone, 360 million barrels, covers about 31 days of imports.\",\"That band is corroborated independently. Kayrros and Kemp put total inventories at 1.1 to 1.2 billion barrels in March 2025, equivalent to around 100 days or just over three months of imports, and Kemp's February 2026 conclusion was that China's inventories are worth slightly more than three months of net imports.\",\"The essential caveat: these are days of cover on paper, not days of survival. A large share of tank inventory is minimum operating stock, tank bottoms and in transit working volume that cannot physically be drawn. Nobody publishes the drawable fraction, and it is not small.\",\"Then came the real test. From late February 2026, Iran war disruption and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz collapsed China's crude imports. They fell from 11.39 million barrels a day in February, the last pre war month, to about 6.36 million in May, a fall of more than 44 percent on Kpler's data. The IEA called it the biggest oil market shock on record and ran a coordinated member release in March 2026.\",\"Here is what actually happened, and it is not the story most people tell about strategic reserves. Refinery runs fell far less than imports, to 13.5 million barrels a day in May, down only about 1.9 million year on year. The gap was closed by stock draws of roughly 1 million barrels a day, by run cuts to record lows, by wartime fuel export curbs that cut exports beyond Hong Kong and Macau to 120,000 barrels a day in April, by record domestic output of about 4.5 million barrels a day, by pipeline crude from Russia and Kazakhstan, and by electric vehicle substitution, which Vortexa's Emma Li estimates cut fuel demand by around 1 million barrels a day in the quarter.\",\"Bloomberg framed the arithmetic bluntly: draws of about 1 million barrels a day are roughly a third of the crude China is no longer receiving, and they pale next to the roughly 1.2 billion barrels the nation holds. The reserve did not have to carry the shock alone. It bought time while the demand side and the supply side did most of the work. That is what a reserve is actually for, and it is the most instructive thing that has happened to Chinese energy security in a decade.\",\"Whether the strategic reserve proper was tapped remains unresolved. Kpler's Sumit Ritolia said the firm cannot completely rule out some strategic reserve utilisation, and Bloomberg noted that exactly how much crude came from state stockpiles remains unclear given the opacity.\"]},{\"id\":\"sec6\",\"q\":\"What is being built to 2030, and what does it signal?\",\"h\":\"Insurance, not demand\",\"p\":[\"The near term build is documented: 169 million barrels across 11 sites through 2026 per Reuters, and a further 271 million barrels of commercial capacity across eight sites in 2026 per S&P Global, taking total capacity above 2.39 billion barrels.\",\"The stated target is more interesting. In August 2025 the semi official China Petroleum and Petrochemical Industry Federation was cited in state media saying state reserve storage capacity should grow to more than 1 billion barrels, equivalent to three months of net imports, with no timeline given. That would match the IEA's 90 day standard, which China is not bound by since it is not an IEA member. Two trade sources separately told Reuters that Beijing aims for six months of imports, roughly 2 billion barrels. Treat that second figure as unverified sourcing, though it is consistent with both the Energy Aspects capacity estimate and the observed pace of construction.\",\"The policy backdrop is explicit. The Communist Party Central Committee's input to the 15th Five Year Plan, covering 2026 to 2030, calls for building a strong energy nation, citing great power competition and stating that the United States continues to contain and suppress China, making the politicisation and weaponisation of energy issues more prominent.\",\"Now the counterweight that most commentary misses. Chinese gasoline and diesel demand are already declining, and overall oil consumption is widely expected to peak around 2027. So China is building the physical capacity to hold six months of import cover at exactly the moment its underlying oil demand tops out.\",\"That tells you what the build is. It is not a demand signal. It is an insurance and geopolitical signal, and both Kemp and the US-China Commission testimony treat the pace of construction as a plausible strategic warning indicator.\",\"There is a commercial corollary, and it is the one worth trading on. Once Hormuz normalises, refilling the drawn stocks and the newly empty capacity is a structural source of crude demand that has nothing whatsoever to do with Chinese consumption. A country that has just proven its reserve works, and has 800 million to 1.2 billion barrels of unfilled capacity, has every reason to buy.\",\"For the flow side of this picture, see our dossiers on whether China is still stockpiling oil<\/a> and on China's days of supply<\/a>.\"]}],\"media\":{\"image\":{\"src\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/coastal-crude-oil-storage-tank-farm-aerial.jpg\",\"label\":\"Floating roof tanks are the only part of China's reserve a satellite can actually see.\",\"credit\":\"Project 54\"},\"infographicLabel\":\"Capacity against fill: the 600 million barrel spread nobody can close.\",\"pdf\":{\"href\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/china-oil-storage-capacity.pdf\",\"title\":\"How Much Oil Can China Actually Store, Slide Deck\",\"meta\":\"Briefing deck \u00b7 Project 54\"},\"video\":{\"src\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/china-oil-storage-capacity-video.mp4\",\"label\":\"How Much Oil Can China Actually Store?\",\"duration\":\"8:21\",\"poster\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/china-oil-storage-capacity-poster.jpg\"}},\"poll\":{\"q\":\"Satellite analysts say China's tanks are around 55 to 65 percent full. What is the biggest problem with that number?\",\"options\":[{\"id\":\"a\",\"label\":\"It cannot see inside the rock caverns\",\"insight\":\"Correct, and it is a permanent blind spot rather than a temporary data gap. Tank top monitoring reads the shadow cast by a floating roof. Underground water sealed caverns have no roof. That is 110 to 130 million barrels of capacity with, in Kayrros's own words, an unknown fill rate, and the 2026 build is increasingly underground.\"},{\"id\":\"b\",\"label\":\"The capacity denominator is itself an estimate\",\"insight\":\"Also true, and it compounds the first problem. Capacity estimates range from 1.8 billion barrels to above 2.39 billion. If the denominator has a 600 million barrel spread, a utilisation percentage calculated from it inherits that uncertainty, which is why we flag the 55 to 65 percent figure as our arithmetic rather than a published number.\"},{\"id\":\"c\",\"label\":\"Fill and capacity use different perimeters\",\"insight\":\"A sharp answer. The EIA counts government and commercial stocks together, while Kpler and Vortexa's narrower figures exclude the underground strategic reserve entirely. Compare a broad numerator with a narrow denominator and you generate a several hundred million barrel error without anyone making a mistake.\"},{\"id\":\"d\",\"label\":\"Nothing, satellite data is objective measurement\",\"insight\":\"This is the trap. Satellite tank top analysis is measurement of what is visible, and inference about everything else. It is the best method available and it is still an estimate. China has published one capacity figure since 2017 and zero inventory figures. Treat every number, including the satellite ones, as an attributed estimate with a date.\"}],\"note\":\"No tallies. Each option is a real limitation of the data every analyst in this market is working with.\"},\"faq\":[{\"q\":\"How much oil storage capacity does China have in 2026?\",\"a\":\"Roughly 1.8 to 2.4 billion barrels, and the estimates genuinely disagree. Kayrros put above ground tank farm capacity at more than 1.8 billion barrels in mid 2024. Energy Aspects estimated about 2.0 billion barrels of total capacity in December 2025. S&P Global Commodity Insights reported in January 2026 that around 271 million barrels of new commercial capacity across eight sites would take the total above 2.39 billion barrels. The only official Chinese figure is 238 million barrels across nine strategic bases, published by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2017 and never updated.\"},{\"q\":\"How much oil does China actually have in storage?\",\"a\":\"Roughly 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrels. The US EIA put total holdings at about 1.4 billion barrels as of December 2025, of which around 360 million barrels is government held and about 1.0 billion barrels is commercial including refinery stocks. Kpler estimated above 1.5 billion barrels in December 2025, Vortexa recorded a record 1.24 billion barrels of above ground crude in April 2026, and Bloomberg reported about 1.2 billion barrels in June 2026. Much of the gap between these figures is definitional, specifically whether the underground strategic reserve is inside the perimeter or not.\"},{\"q\":\"How long would China's oil reserves last?\",\"a\":\"About three months on paper. At around 1.4 billion barrels of total stocks and 2025 imports of 11.6 million barrels a day, the cover is roughly 121 days of gross imports, or about 95 days measured against refinery throughput of 14.82 million barrels a day. That arithmetic is ours, but it is corroborated by Kayrros and John Kemp, who independently put inventories at around 100 days or just over three months of imports. The critical caveat is that these are days of cover on paper, not days of survival, because tank bottoms and working volume cannot be physically drawn and nobody publishes the drawable fraction.\"},{\"q\":\"Does China store oil underground?\",\"a\":\"Yes, and increasingly so. There are four in service underground crude storage sites, at Jinzhou in Liaoning, Huangdao in Shandong, and Huizhou and Zhanjiang in Guangdong, with combined capacity of at least 100 million barrels. Kayrros puts underground capacity at around 130 million barrels with an unknown fill rate. A fifth cavern is under construction at Ningbo in Zhejiang, started in December 2023 and expected to complete around the end of 2026. These are water sealed hard rock caverns, some as much as 200 metres below the surface. Much of the 2026 capacity build is underground, notably in Fujian.\"},{\"q\":\"Why does China not publish its oil reserve numbers?\",\"a\":\"Because it treats stocks of crude and refined products, both commercial and strategic, as a state secret. The last official capacity disclosure was in 2017 and there have never been official inventory figures. The analyst John Kemp's assessment is that the secrecy is understandable given China's extreme vulnerability to any interruption of imports, and that there is no benefit in sharing inventory levels with potential adversaries. Analysts reconstruct the numbers two ways, through a supply balance of output plus imports minus refinery runs, and through satellite monitoring of floating tank roofs. Neither method can see inside a rock cavern.\"}],\"newsletter\":{\"kicker\":\"The Energy Growth Brief\",\"title\":[\"Intelligence,\",\"to your inbox\"],\"body\":\"Join energy and industrial leaders getting our marketing, AI-growth and revenue-architecture intelligence, direct, no filler.\",\"placeholder\":\"you@company.com\",\"cta\":\"Subscribe\",\"note\":\"No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We read every reply.\"},\"related\":[{\"title\":\"China's Oil Reserve: How Many Days of Supply?\",\"topic\":\"Analysis\",\"href\":\"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/china-oil-reserve-days-of-supply\/\"},{\"title\":\"Is China Still Stockpiling Oil in 2026?\",\"topic\":\"Analysis\",\"href\":\"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/is-china-still-stockpiling-oil-2026\/\"},{\"title\":\"Why Every Estimate of China's Oil Stockpile Disagrees\",\"topic\":\"Analysis\",\"href\":\"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/china-oil-reserve-estimates-vary-sources\/\"},{\"title\":\"Does China's Oil Stockpiling Follow IEA Rules?\",\"topic\":\"Policy\",\"href\":\"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/does-china-oil-stockpiling-follow-iea-rules\/\"},{\"title\":\"IEA Emergency Oil Reserves in 2026\",\"topic\":\"Policy\",\"href\":\"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/iea-emergency-oil-reserves-2026\/\"}]}","p54_faq":"","p54_media":"","p54_comments_enabled":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-strategy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3697,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions\/3697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projectfifty4.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}