Crude throughput at Chinese refineries slumped in July to the lowest level since the height of the pandemic in March 2020, amid unplanned facility outages and lower processing rates at independent refiners due to declining refining margins. Chinese refiners processed 53.21 million tons of crude oil last month, equal to 12.53 million barrels per day (bpd), per Reuters calculations based on official data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The refinery throughput was down by 8.8 percent compared to July 2021 and down from the June 2022 processing rate of 13.37 million bpd. In June, Chinese refiners’ processing rates were higher than in May, but some 10 percent lower than the all-time high reached last year in June, data showed last month. Chinese refineries’ throughput fell for the first time in more than a decade during the first half of the year, by 6 percent to 13.4 million bpd. […]