China’s refinery processing and crude imports were unambiguously weak in July, but the world’s largest oil importer still added to stockpiles, maintaining a trend of building inventories. China added about 290,000 barrels per day (bpd) to either commercial or strategic crude inventories in July, according to calculations based on official data. The July stockpile build reversed a draw of 470,000 bpd in June, and brought the total inventory additions for the first seven months of the year to around 1.02 million bpd. China doesn’t disclose the volumes of crude flowing into or out of strategic and commercial stockpiles. But an estimate can be made by deducting the total amount of crude available from imports and domestic output from the amount of crude processed. […]