China, which reported 6.9-per-cent GDP growth in the third quarter, its slowest since the 2008 global financial crisis, has had a voracious appetite for crude oil this year, helped by the filling up of its newly built strategic storage facilities. Chinese crude-oil imports over the first nine months of this year averaged 6.68mmbd, up a 8.8 per cent on the corresponding period of 2014. But attention now seems to have turned to what Chinese demand will be once the storage tanks have been filled.