China is the world’s largest oil importer and over the past decade has built a huge reserve of the commodity. China made an unprecedented intervention in the global oil market, releasing crude from its strategic reserve for the first time with the explicit aim of lowering prices which came amid surging energy costs in China, not just for oil but also for coal and natural gas, and electricity shortages in some provinces that have forced some factories to cut production. Was this the right move for china ?

