China’s refinery crude throughput rose 4.6% year on year to 52.78 million mt, or an average 12.48 million b/d, in October, preliminary data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed. The October crude throughput was, however, down 0.5% from a record high of 12.54 million b/d in September, according to S&P Global Platts calculations. The decrease was attributed mainly to lower run rates at state-owned refiners, despite slightly higher run rates seen for independent refineries in October.
China’s state-owned refiners — Sinopec, PetroChina, Sinochem and China National Offshore Oil Corporation — cut their planned average refinery run rate to around 82% of nameplate capacity in October, from around 84% in September, according to a Platts survey earlier. On the other hand, independent refineries in Shandong raised their operating rates slightly to an average of 67.38% in October from 66.8% in September, data from JLC, a Chinese energy information provider, showed.
Over January-October, total refinery crude throughput across China rose 7.8% year on year to 505.1 million mt, or 12.18 million b/d, NBS data showed.
China’s crude oil production in October edged up 0.3% year on year to 16.09 million mt, or 3.8 million b/d, according to NBS data. The figure was also up by 2.6% month on month on a barrel per day basis, Platts calculations showed. In the first 10 months of this year, domestic crude oil output declined 1.7% to 157.21 million mt, averaging 3.79 million b/d.
The country’s natural gas production rose 7.5% year on year to 13.4 Bcm in October, and 6.3% year on year to 129.5 Bcm over January-October, NBS data showed.