Chinanews, Shanghai, Sept 13 – China's strategic oil reserves might only be used in emergency cases. China will not manipulate oil prices with such oil reserves, said Hu Weiping, head of the Energy Department at the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC), on Monday, the Shanghai Securities Journal reported.

He made the statement while attending the Sino-US oil annual forum. Before he made the statement, some international communities had attacked Chinese strategic oil reserve policy several times. The International Energy Agency once criticized Chinese strategic oil reserves system for lacking in transparency, stressing that the strategic oil reserves could only be used to solve the oil shortage problem.

Hu's remarks will become more meaningful at this time when China's third strategic oil reserve base, Huangdao base, is near completion.

At present, Chinese oil reserves fall far below the 90-day oil reserving average level. Even if Chinese oil reserve has reached this level one day, it may still be hard for China to control international oil market with its oil reserves, said Niu Li, an analyst at the State Information Center.

Crude oil market is a fully open market. Unless there is some big incidence happening, no country in the world can manipulate crude oil prices, Niu said.

While China reserves its cotton mainly to balance the supply and demand, it stores crude oil for national security's sake, Niu noted.

China doesn't store oil in order to manipulate oil prices. Rather, it reserves some oil in case there may be an oil supply shortage in the market. Days ago, when China's southern region encountered oil supply problem, police had to stand guard near the gas stations to keep the order, Hu said.

As the first four oil reserve bases are all located in the southern areas, when these oil reserve bases are put into operation, it will be less likely for these areas to encounter the oil shortage problem, Niu said.