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Energy

China to Blame for Higher Crude Prices?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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oilToday’s FT energy blog includes a post claiming that China is responsible for recent rises in crude prices because it is building its strategic petroleum reserve. The post cites satellite imagery showing more tanker traffic into Chinese ports near strategic reserve storage tanks.

This is not news. China’s intentions in this regard have been well known for at least two years, and as recently as last December the Chinese government noted that falling crude prices presented a good opportunity to fill the country’s newly built strategic reserve tanks.

We noted then a report from the St. Louis Fed that even if China filled every strategic tank it had, that would only amount to 24 million barrels. That amount would increase demand by just 0.125 percent. It’s really hard to see how that could drive crude prices from $35/barrel to $60/barrel. No, it’s impossible to see how that could happen.

Paul Ausick

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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