Oil and gas storage is to store oil and gas in a certain form for later use. Of course, the storage of oil and gas will have different forms due to different storage purposes, different supply objects and different standby fields. For example, from the perspective of national defense, China's strategic oil and gas reserves should not only attach importance to the principle and quantity of reserves, but also distinguish the main and auxiliary relationship of reserves according to the variety of oil and gas resources and the needs of the army, and clarify the relationship between reserve objects and reserve forms.

therefore, under different social and economic development periods and backgrounds, the problems faced by oil and gas reserves are different, and different management departments of the national government will look at the problems from different angles and use different management policies, systems, management methods and ways to solve them. However, there is no doubt that the reserve management of oil and gas resources, which is related to the national economy, people's livelihood and national security, should be systematically and comprehensively understood from a strategic perspective.

strategic oil and gas reserve refers to the storage of oil and gas or its products by a country or enterprise in a certain way to meet the needs of national security. In this concept, both the need for the physical inventory form of emergency petroleum and its products and the need to establish a longer-term replacement reserve form for this way are included. There is another broader concept of petroleum reserve, namely the connotation of petroleum resource reserve. Therefore, in the form of reserve materials, it should include both the physical form of oil and its products, the form of oil resources reserves sealed after trial production, and the form of oil resources exploration reserves in special geographical locations that have certain conditions but need further exploration.

in the logistics chain of oil resources exploitation, processing and sales (Figure 7-4), strategic oil and gas reserves should have reserve forms in several key links. Such as reserves in the exploration stage, reserves after trial production, crude oil reserves mined, and reserves processed into refined oil.

figure 7-4 process flow of oil and gas resources acquisition

strategic oil and gas exploration reserve form is a reserve form that has completed the most basic exploration work and other work needs to be further developed. The storage and reserve of strategic oil and gas mineral areas is to complete the first two tasks in Figure 7-4, and then directly mine when necessary. The storage in the form of oil in kind is to store the oil in a specific place after it is mined. Petroleum products reserve has turned oil and gas into a kind of petroleum products that can be directly used after processing, such as gasoline and aviation diesel, and then reserved.

from the emergency degree of oil and gas reserves, the first form of oil and gas reserves has the highest emergency degree. As long as the emergency time is considered, it can be transported from the storage place to the use place by using the oil supply network pipeline. The emergency degree of the second oil and gas reserve form is lower than that of the first one. We should not only consider the time from storage to use, but also consider the time from mining in the reserved geological structure area to storage. The third form of oil and gas reserve has the lowest emergency degree, and it is a form that provides a replacement for the second.

National reserves can include both national strategic security reserves and commercial reserves, and the latter is reserved for obtaining new and more reserve funds. For example, the national oil reserve of the United States is used to raise funds for the general election. On September 2, 25, 26 member countries of the International Energy Agency agreed to use 2 million barrels of strategic reserve crude oil every day for 3 days, in order to cope with the loss of 1.5 million barrels of crude oil every day in the international oil market caused by Hurricane Katrina, and to ease the oil supply shortage. This action led to a drop in international crude oil prices that day, and the futures prices of crude oil in new york market and Brent crude oil in Beihai dropped from 7.85 USD/barrel and 68.89 USD/barrel on August 3th, 25 to 67.57 USD/barrel and 66.6 USD/barrel [161].

the China municipal government has planned the construction of the national strategic oil reserve project, which will be divided into three phases, and the national oil reserve will reach the consumption demand level of 9 days in about 15 years (table 7-6). Judging from this planned reserve, it should be obtained from the perspective of emergency reserve. Then, at this reserve level, the effectiveness of the market regulation function of strategic oil reserves will be constrained.

table 7-6 statistics of strategic oil reserves in China

note: "days" refers to the time when the total reserves can replace imports in case of emergency. (According to the reference [15,162])

Because reserves are closely related to consumption, and the quantity and location of reserves are often determined by the quantity and location of consumption, we should first pay attention to the distribution of consumption status. In addition, the basic factors affecting the consumption of energy and mineral resources are economic development, industrialization, population growth and scientific and technological progress (Table 7-7)[127]. Moreover, it shows four laws: first, with the growth of GDP in the process of industrialization, the total energy consumption basically increases in a linear mode; Second, whether in industrialization or post-industrialization stage, there is an obvious linear relationship between per capita GDP and per capita resource consumption; Third, the change of energy consumption intensity is closely related to the industrialization process. With the industrialization stage, the energy consumption intensity generally shows a slow upward trend. When the economy matures and enters the post-industrialization stage, the economic growth mode has undergone major changes and the energy consumption intensity has begun to decline. Fourth, the energy consumption rate in the process of economic development shows a three-stage model.

table 7-7 relationship between energy consumption and GDP in the process of industrialization

(according to reference [127])

note: * energy consumption elasticity coefficient = energy consumption growth rate /GDP growth rate.

this shows that the strategic oil reserves have a great relationship with a country's economic development stage. Therefore, when designing China's strategic oil reserve target, we must fully consider and accurately predict the changes of China's economic development stage, especially pay attention to the turning point of the economic development stage, so as to flexibly adjust a series of indicators such as the strategic oil reserve target.

American oil reserves often become the benchmark for international hot money to manipulate oil prices. This can fully reflect the impact of strategic oil reserves on market economy. As American oil stocks increase, the international oil market price will fall. And its reduction means that the demand for buying a lot of oil has come, and the international oil price has risen. This has become an obvious law in the current international oil market.

Although China's strategic oil reserves can reach a certain scale after 15 years of construction (Table 7-6). But this is far from the fact that the US oil reserves have reached 9×18 barrels. From the perspective of market economy, the greater the purchase volume, the greater the possibility of affecting the market price. Therefore, if the strategic oil reserve does not reach a certain scale, it is unlikely to affect the price trend of the oil market. Therefore, China's strategic oil reserves need to be further expanded.

to achieve the above two purposes, strategic oil and gas reserves need to solve the problems of what form and how to reserve. Diversification of reserve forms can better reduce risks. Increasing the oil reserves on the ground is not the only option. Strengthening the construction of China's autonomous tanker fleet is also one of the solutions. At present, some oil companies have stored about 8×14t oil at sea, and about 3 ~ 35 giant tankers and 1 Suez-class tankers are used by oil companies for floating oil storage at sea. These supertankers are anchored in the Gulf of Mexico in the United States, and other supertankers are anchored in Asia and the Middle East [162].

to sum up, the connotation of China's strategic oil and gas reserves should include longer-term, safer and more systematic demand satisfaction and significance.