In December of 2025, China’s consumer price index (CPI), rose year over year by 0.8percent, up from November by 0.1 percent, which is the highest CPI since March of 2023. China has had four consecutive months with a core CPI — excluding food and energy — above 1 percent, climbing to 1.2 percent year over year according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) latest numbers.
China’s daily average crude oil imports hit an all-time high. The increased amount of crude oil imported will lessen concerns regarding falling global oil consumption by the world’s leading energy producer and consumer as electric vehicles take over, renewable energy sources continue to grow in importance and climate change and air quality become more significant issues.
In 2024, China’s average daily imports of crude oil were 11,550,000 barrels per day (or 55773 million tons); this represents a 4.4percent increase from the prior year’s average daily crude oil imports. In December of 2024, alone, average import amounts increased to 13.18 million barrels per day (55.97 million tons total for December).
As these statistics suggest, the expected decline in oil demand may not be a long-term trend. However, analysts have also noted that much of the crude oil imported into China during the first half of 2025 might have been purchased primarily for storage purposes and not necessarily with any immediate intention of usage.
Due to China’s strong sustained purchase activity, global crude oil prices remain supported; however, this has been offset by significant increases in crude oil supply from OPEC+ countries over the last several months, along with the uncertainty regarding the pace of global economic growth that is being impacted by potential changes in the United States’ trade policy (i.e., the tariffs) and unpredictable trade patterns with other countries.
As of March 2025, China has added significant amounts of storage capacity for crude oil, with a combined total capacity of potentially up to 1,000,000 barrels of crude oil daily, according to Frederic Lasserre, head of global research and analysis at Gunvor, a global commodity trading firm. From the trends that Lasserre saw during 2022 and future trend projections he made for 2026, Lasserre indicated that China will likely continue building both strategic and commercial crude oil reserves at the end of 2026. Currently, according to Lasserre’s estimates, approximately 60% of the storage capacity in China (as of the end of 2023) has already been filled.
Furthermore, in addition to building new types of oil storage capacity, China continues to build upon the existing storage capacity of crude oil through continued construction (the planned expansions of existing storage capabilities). In total, China has planned to construct an additional eleven storage facilities that will have a total combined capacity of approximately 169 million barrels of oil. This combined total storage capacity of the new facilities would account for around 14 days of China’s crude oil imports.
Vortexa and Kpler reported “The expansions come after a four-year period of expansion, during which time China had previously increased its oil storage capacity by 180 million to 190 million barrels”