{"id":80509,"date":"2026-04-23T19:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/80509\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T19:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:46:26","slug":"new-data-shows-china-came-into-the-iran-war-with-over-3x-the-strategic-oil-reserves-of-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/80509\/","title":{"rendered":"New data shows China came into the Iran war with over 3x the strategic oil reserves of the US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New data from the US government released this week shows just how aggressively China added to its oil reserves ahead of the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

The US Energy Information Administration<\/a> estimates China ended 2025 with nearly 1.4 billion barrels of oil stocked away, compared to 1.2 billion barrels among the 32 members of<\/a> the International Energy Agency (IEA), which includes 413 million barrels in US coffers.<\/p>\n

And the US has been drawing down its stockpile, with the latest US reserve levels<\/a> showing about 405 million barrels following the sale of over 8 million barrels in the first half of April.<\/p>\n

\"FREEPORT, A US Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage facility in Freeport, Texas is seen in 2022. (Brandon Bell\/Getty Images) \u00b7 Brandon Bell via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The analysis estimated that China, which doesn\u2019t publicly disclose its reserve levels, added an average of 1.1 million barrels per day to its strategic inventories in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to the Iran conflict, preliminary government data indicate that China has continued building inventories in 2026,\u201d the article added.<\/p>\n

China is the world\u2019s largest crude oil importer, which makes it uniquely dependent on global oil. But the new data underlines how China has capitalized on a key strategic buffer as the world faces an ongoing energy shock, with energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz still largely shut down.<\/p>\n

President Trump on Thursday described the strait <\/a>as \u201csealed up tight.\u201d<\/p>\n

As China aggressively moved to fill its coffers last year, the US made only limited oil deposits into its reserves in 2024 and 2025. That came after massive withdrawals during the last oil shock following Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

President Trump has announced plans to release a total of 172 million barrels<\/a> in the coming months to combat high prices because of the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

\"BEIJING, A gas station attendant is seen in Beijing in March. (Poly Fei\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images) \u00b7 SOPA Images via Getty Images <\/p>\n

China also boasts a major advantage in clean energy, with the IEA recently finding that <\/a>\u201cclean energy technology manufacturing is highly geographically concentrated\u201d in China.<\/p>\n

The nation is estimated to control about 85% of the world\u2019s supply chain capacity for solar panels and 80% of lithium-ion battery capacity.<\/p>\n

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.<\/p>\n

Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow’s stock prices<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New data from the US government released this week shows just how aggressively China added to its oil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8825,29047,262,3867,6210,34,3389,29048,1730],"class_list":{"0":"post-80509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-barrels-of-oil","9":"tag-brandon-bell","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-getty-images","12":"tag-international-energy-agency","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-oil-reserves","15":"tag-reserve-levels","16":"tag-us-energy-information-administration"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116455747567064135","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}