The coronavirus outbreak in China is already impacting demand for fuel as airlines are canceling thousands of flights to China and Chinese authorities are discouraging travel by air or road in and out of the most-affected regions and have imposed a lockdown on the 11-million-resident city where the virus was first detected. Demand for jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel is likely to be suppressed in the coming weeks, potentially prompting Chinese and other Asian refiners to cut refinery rates, analysts say. The slowdown in China’s fuel consumption is also aggravated by an extended period of public holidays for office workers and multinational corporations—including Google, Apple, McDonalds, and IKEA, to name a few—suspending operations or shutting down offices, stores, and restaurants. The weaker fuel demand in China is spilling over onto weakening refining margins for processing crude oil into jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel. Therefore, refiners in China—and elsewhere in […]