China plans 3-mln-tonne fuel reserve this year

China wants to set up a 3-million-tonne reserve of oil products this year, which is practically impossible, a researcher at a think-tank run by the country's top oil refiner, Sinopec Group, was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"In reality, this goal is impossible to achieve," Li Liang, deputy director of the strategic research institute under Sinopec, told the Shanghai Securities News.

Chinese officials have said they want to use the fall in prices over the last year to stock up on oil, since China depends on imports for around half of its imported crude, a proportion that has grown and is expected to continue growing.

China announced a revitalization plan for the oil and petrochemical sectors this month, including a pledge to boost state reserves of refined fuels. The government gave no details, but an industry official told Reuters earlier this month China plans to set up 10 million tonnes of state fuel reserves by 2011, or about two weeks' worth of current consumption of gasoline, diesel and kerosene combined.

Li said an oil price-setting mechanism the government brought in at the start of this year had made pricing more transparent, but that meant there was a wide expectation of the next price move, encouraging hoarding of fuel.

On recent research trips to Guangxi and Guizhou in southern China he had seen many small and medium-sized storage tanks, from 1-2 tonnes to 10 tonnes or more, in the process of being filled.