China said it more than doubled the size of its strategic crude oil reserves between November 2014 and the middle of this year, building inventories at a rate exceeding analysts' estimates of the country's stockbuilding.
The world's largest energy consumer increased its reserves to 26.1 million tonnes, or about 190.5 million barrels, by mid-2015, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday. The increase occurred as the country took advantage of steep declines in oil prices to stockpile crude.
The UK faces a tighter energy crunch than last year, with more contingency measures needed to ensure the lights stay on, an assessment from National Grid has shown.
The gap between total electricity generating capacity and peak demand would fall to just 1.2% without measures in place such as paying moth-balled power plants to be ready to come online and paying factories to be prepared to power down if needed.
With those extra measures in place for times of peak demand, the capacity margin rises to 5.1%, the National Grid assessment shows.
Last year’s capacity margin was 4.1% without additional provisions, which raised the breathing space to 6.1%.
