China’s build-up of oil refining capacity is threatening the viability of other Asian refiners as the country is about to become the world’s largest refiner this year amid still depressed demand for fuels. Bloomberg reports that the refining capacity of the country has increased threefold over the last 20 years and is on track to exceed the refining capacity of the United States this year as more new refineries come online. China had 1.4 million bpd in new refining capacity under construction as of November last year. This amount, distributed among four refinery projects, will add to the more than 1 million bpd in new capacity that has already been added since 2019. Despite worries that this capacity will end up unused, especially with oil demand likely to stop growing in the observable future, China recently gave the go-ahead to yet another refining project: the Yulong refinery and petrochemicals […]