Birdnow's Aviary

February 20, 2026

China Stockpiling OIl

Timothy Birdnow

China has been stockpiling oil and other necessities since 2019 and now has a sizable supply of oil. Why?

From the Zerohedge article:

China’s stocks of crude oil apparently increased by 54 million tonnes (about 400 million barrels or 1.1 million barrels per day) during 2025 after a similar increase in 2024. China’s massive inventory build-up has helped avert the accumulation of stocks in other areas and limited the fall in prices even as Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners have boosted production.

Inventory accumulation, Kemp writes echoing what we said years ago, has also been described as a "strategic warning indicator” that could indicate the country’s leaders are preparing for a future conflict with the United States over Taiwan.

"Energy production and stockpile buildups often precede great power industrial wars,” one analyst told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission established by the U.S. Congress.

In building strategic reserves to enable its economy to keep functioning and armed forces to keep fighting during a future conflict, the country is following long-standing precedent.

Also, this large a stockpile could be used to manipulate fuel prices at a critical juncture by dumping supply and thus driving down costs. Remember, by buying up all this oil the Chicoms artificially inflated oil prices in the first place. Id trhey should dump them at a critical point the prices will drop (even if only temporarily) and that could hold the key to victory on, say, the political front; dump them just before an American election and you get a crazy Democrat (but I repeat myself) in office.

I would add the reverse holds true, and interestingly enough Xi's been buying while the Russo-Ukrainian war has been raging. He's helped keep oil prices up, which has funded the Putin war machine. Putin needs the higher priced oil to keep his economy grinding along. Get oil down enough and Putin has no income and thus has to sue for peace.

But Tyler Durden is correct and this could well be a sign China is preparing for war.

At any rare there is a plot afoot and the Chinese have a long term strategy here. But they are prepared and have been preparing since Trump's firsr Presidency. Considering they are the ones who unleashed Covid on us I suspect that they've been preparing for war all the way back then. Now they are ready, or nearly enough.

IF they plan to invade Taiwan (and they will only do that if they think they need it for internal reasons; right now it's a useful tool to gin up public support and their country is not doing as well as they pretend it is) they will probably do it after the next general election, in my opinion. They know there will be chaos in the U.S. at that point and they will need that to keep us at bay, make sure our leadership is paralyzed. It's why Putin invaded Georgia right after Obama was elected, for instance.

At any rate in this life you always follow the money, and theuy are putting theirs into oil reserves. We should do the same. Oh, and our oil industry is very vulnerable to market manipulation as it is more expensive to frack than it is to just drill and pump it out.

Keep a sharp eye.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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