I figured I would start this thread for stuff that doesn't belong in weird news and also isn't quite big enough to deserve a thread of its own.
Today, I nominate this story in today's paper about
China's strategic oil reserves.
My TL/DR summary is that China claims its oil reserves are at a certain level. Some other independent dudes took a look at commercially available satellite imagery. They counted oil tanks in China and measured the width of a crescent shaped shadow cast onto the roof of each tank by the tank's wall. This tells them how much the floating roof is sunk, and therefor how full the tank is. Then they calculate it all up and came up with a very big number. China claims 287 million barrels of reserves, and these guys came up with 600 million barrels of reserves. China says it is aiming for a reserve that would equal 100 days of imports, but is only at 36 days currently. This independent estimate puts them at around 70 days. The US has a 150 day reserve.
What does all this mean to you? Well, the price of oil is fairly low right now but it is higher than it should be because China is working actively on building up its reserves and will continue to do that for some time. They are creating an artificial demand. Once they stop buying all that excess oil, the price of oil will plummet. I leave to the reader's imagination what that will mean. Low gas prices, collapsing local economies in oil fields, deflation, who knows? I don't. But I think it's interesting.