The body intended to manage the strategic oil reserve took a step closer to reality yesterday with the announcement that a director had been slated to run it, an industry source said.

Yang Liangsong, president of the China Economic Herald, a newspaper run by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), will take the reins, according to the source from the NDRC's energy bureau.

Though the appointment has not been announced officially, Yang is the man for the job, the source said.

And a source at the newspaper said it was already an "open secret" that Yang would assume the post.

"It is true," the source said. "We have known about this since last week."

Yang, a native of central China's Hubei Province, worked for the State Development Planning Commission, the predecessor of the NDRC, before being named president of the newspaper in the 1990s.

China, as the world's second largest oil consumer, has already kicked off work on its first four strategic oil reserve bases and is busying selecting a second batch.

China Daily reported yesterday that domestic oil giants are planning to pump crude oil into the last two bases, in Huangdao, Shandong Province, and Dalian, Liaoning Province, by the end of this year.

Speaking at a forum in April, NDRC Vice-Minister Chen Deming said the authorities plan to maintain a strategic oil reserve equivalent to 30 days of imports by 2010.

The country will have to maintain a fairly large reserve to withstand an interruption to its oil supply, for example, in the event of a price fluctuation in the international market, Chen said.

(China Daily June 29, 2007)