China’s fuel exports are booming amid battered domestic demand due to the coronavirus outbreak, analysts and trade sources tell Reuters as higher Chinese exports flood the Asian market, which sees depressed demand from the outbreak itself. In the first quarter of 2020, China’s demand for refined oil products will slump by 35.7 percent year on year, and the market will find itself in a surplus, despite the reduced refinery run rates at Chinese refiners, according to the research arm of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), cited by Reuters. Due to weak fuel demand and depressed industrial activity, Chinese refiners—from the biggest refiner in Asia, Sinopec, to the independent refiners in Shandong— have cut refinery runs , while commodity trading houses and oil majors are scrambling to find spot buyers for crude oil outside China. According to estimates from IHS Markit , the virus outbreak is set to knock […]