Last month’s plunge in crude to $30 a barrel proved too tempting for China to turn down even as its economy lurches toward the weakest growth in a generation. Chinese companies booked tankers to load more West African crude in February than in any single month since at least 2011, data from the physical shipping market collated by Bloomberg show. It also increased its purchases from producers in the North Sea and Russia. The voyages are all thousands of miles farther than the Middle East, which supplies most to the Asian country. “This surge in Chinese demand for crude goes against recent […]