en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_petroleum_reserve_(China)

This overstates what happened.

Contemporary reporting describes export curbs/restrictions, not a complete halt of all refined-product supplies to other countries.

• Reuters reported on May 22, 2026 that China was expected to see a slight uptick in refined fuel exports in June from May, while keeping restrictions in place.
• Reuters then reported on July 14, 2026 that China's refined oil product exports stood at 4.36 million tons in June.
• Reuters also reported on June 25, 2026 that China was raising July export allowances for state-owned refiners.

Those reports are incompatible with the claim that China "halted its supplies" outright. A more accurate description is that China sharply restricted or curtailed refined-product exports during the conflict while still allowing some exports to continue.

This confuses total crude inventories with the official strategic petroleum reserve (SPR).

S&P Global reported that 1.23 billion barrels was China's "crude inventory, including commercial and strategic petroleum reserves" in August 2025. The same report said China had stopped publishing SPR statistics after 2017 and cited Ursa Space data putting the SPR itself at about 213.19 million barrels in August 2025.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration likewise distinguishes between China's government-held inventories and its much larger commercial inventories. EIA estimated that in December 2025 China had about 360 million barrels of government-held inventories and about 1 billion barrels of commercial crude oil inventories.

So describing 1.23 billion barrels as China's official SPR is incorrect; that figure corresponds to combined crude inventories, not the official strategic reserve alone.