China appears to have kept the flow of crude into strategic and commercial storage facilities at high levels in the first quarter, even as the price of oil climbed. While China doesn’t release detailed statistics of its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) and commercial stockpiles a rough idea can be gleaned by looking at refinery throughput numbers and the volume of domestic and imported crude. Refineries processed 12.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in the first quarter, according to official data released on Wednesday, up 4.4 percent from the three months to end-December, and also up by the same margin from the year earlier quarter. Crude imports in the […]