> "In the short term, however, the supply-demand mismatch could be alleviated by Beijing’s move to build a stockpile of crude oil to improve its energy security

> "In the short term, however, the supply-demand mismatch could be alleviated by Beijing’s move to build a stockpile of crude oil to improve its energy security." > "Chinese entities have snapped up 82m barrels in the past three months to build this inventory, equivalent to the demand of 900,000 barrels a day." China's gearing up for near-term war; Xi is stockpiling vast amounts of multiple commodities, besides just oil[0]. The country's rapid shift to BEV's dovetails with that, what with crude oil imports being China's largest, and easiest to blockade, external dependency. [0] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/07/23/why-is-xi-jinping-building-secret-commodity-stockpiles https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/07/23/w... ("Why is Xi Jinping building secret commodity stockpiles? | Vast new holdings of grain, natural gas and oil suggest trouble ahead")