◆ 2026-09-20·China · 131 crude storage sites
China's crude stocks fall to the year's low
China publishes no weekly crude stock figure. The desk reads the tanks instead: some 3,850 tanks at 131 sites, measured from Sentinel-1 radar passes, day or night and through cloud. The week to 18 September closes at 1,147 million barrels, the lowest level of 2026 and 127 million below the 8 May peak of 1,274 million.
China crude stocks · million barrels · weekly averages
The draw is recent and broad. Between 11 and 18 September, the 89 sites seen again in that window gave up 25.7 million barrels: thirty drew more than 0.2 million, twenty-one built. Wafangdian, on the Liaodong coast, lost 4.1 million as its tanks went from 38% to 33% full. Lanqiao gave up 3.2 million, Huilai in Guangdong 3.2 as well, from 70% to 61%. Beilun fell from 50% to 38%, the Shandong terminal from 45% to 34%.
Against last year the gap has widened: September is running 25 million barrels below September 2025.
What the tanks cannot say is why. Imports, refinery runs and reserve movements all end in the same place, and the level is what a satellite measures. Underground reserve caverns are the one part no satellite sees: their 107 million barrels are an estimate, carried in the total and held flat between updates. Week-to-week changes are firmer than the absolute level.