Xinhua halts publication of monthly oil stockpile data

China’s Xinhua news agency said it is halting its regular publication of data on oil stockpiles held in the country. Crude oil, gasoline and diesel stocks data, normally published each month by Xinhua’s OGP newsletter, will in the future not be published “because these figures are not available any more,” Xinhua said, without elaborating. In the past, Xinhua has released the data around the start of each month. The last figures it published were for August 2009. In its reports on the data, Xinhua had cited state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. as the source. (November 3, 2009)