China Takes Advantage of Lower Oil Prices to Build Inventories

China is taking advantage of the slide in oil prices, which began in October, to ramp up its stockpiling of cheaper crude.  In December alone, China is estimated to have sharply boosted the volume of crude going to storage for the highest rate of stockpiling in six months, according to estimates by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell.  China does not report commercial or strategic inventories, so analysts are trying to estimate the volume of stockpiling by deducting the amount of processed crude from all available crude coming from imports…