Green Options

In a rare admission of China’s strategic petroleum reserve capacity, a senior industry executive acknowledged that all four state-owned emergency oil reserve tanks – holding a total 100 million barrels – are filled to the brim.

Revealing that China’s current stockpiles have already exceeded the capacity of the first phase of facilities, which the government built over the last two years, China Shipping Group President Li Shaode urged the government to use foreign exchange reserves to finance floating storage capacity in the short term.

Li’s comments come after a string of recent oil- and gas-related events in China. Within the last few months, China has entered into natural gas supply agreements with Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and has already begun construction on needed pipelines. Just yesterday, China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) signed a 25 year gas supply agreement with Qatar.

The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that it plans to take advantage of the recent decline in crude oil prices, and has issued a solicitation to purchase approximately 12 million barrels of crude oil for the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to replenish supplies sold following hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

From Senator McCain blaming Barack Obama for high gas prices, to the House GOP’s recent (and ongoing) faux-libuster demanding an up-or-down vote on increasing domestic oil drilling, there’s no doubt that the Republican Party is pulling out all the stops to make oil the wedge issue in the upcoming election. But the Obama camp has begun a coordinated push-back and revealed the “New Energy Plan For America,” which Obama said would create 5 million new jobs and eliminate our need [...]