Nation`s petroleum imports increase amid weak world crude market, statistics show
Source: www.chinamining.org Citation: Reuters Date: May 19, 2016
China appears to be stockpiling crude oil at a faster pace than the market had expected, taking advantage of low prices but perhaps also pulling forward its demand for imported crude.
While China doesn`t disclose the amount of crude in its strategic storage, an estimate can be made by subtracting refinery runs from the total amount of oil available from both imports and domestic output.
Domestic crude production dropped 5.6 percent in April from a year earlier to 16.59 million tons, equivalent to about 4.04 million barrels per day (bpd), the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.
This was the lowest rate on a daily basis since July 2013, and it brought the year-on-year decline in the first four months of the year to 2.7 percent, with about 4.11 million bpd be produced.
While lower domestic output in the world`s fourth-largest producer shows China`s oil companies aren`t immune to the pressures of low prices, the shortfall has been more than made up by sharply higher imports.
Crude imports for the first four months of the year were 123.7 million tons, equivalent to about 7.46 million bpd and 11.8 percent higher than for the same period last year.
Taking imports and domestic output together, total crude availability in China for the January-April period was 11.56 million bpd.
Total refinery throughput was 2.9 percent higher in the first four months at about 10.69 million bpd.
This means that about 870,000 bpd of crude were available that weren`t processed through refineries. This oil most likely made its way into commercial and strategic storage facilities.
It also means that China is filling storage facilities at a considerably faster pace than had been expected in a Reuters poll of analysts conducted in December.
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