BEIJING: China's crude imports rose more than a fifth in April from a year earlier to a record high of 6.78 million barrels per day (bpd), data showed on Thursday, helped by higher seasonal demand and indications of stockpiling. As refineries cut production during the peak maintenance season, the strong crude imports suggest some of the oil went straight into storage.
The world's top energy consumer took in 27.88 million tonnes, or 6.78 million barrels per day (bpd), of oil in April, according to the General Administration of Customs, up 22.4 percent on a daily basis from 5.54 million bpd in March and up 2.3 percent from a previous record of 6.63 million bpd in January. In the first four months of this year, crude imports rose 11.5 percent year-on-year to 102.61 million tonnes, or 6.24 million bpd, the customs data showed.
A Beijing-based crude oil trader said the high imports could suggest stockpiling in commercial storage, or even strategic reserves. Commercial refined fuel stocks in China dropped 2.05 percent at the end of March from a month ago, after rising for three months.
Of the total, diesel stocks fell 5.66 percent as demand rebounded at the start of spring ploughing and due to building work for infrastructure projects, the official Xinhua news agency has said. China rarely discloses information about strategic oil reserves (SPR).
"While industrial activity has begun to recover moderately, the strength of the import data likley reflected state stockpiling more than a seasonal recovery," Barclays' analyst Sijin Cheng wrote in a research note on Thursday.
"SPR fill may have already accounted for an average of 260,000 bpd in the first quarter, and could remain buoyant as China could add a total of 58 million bpd of SPR this year."
State-oil firms had higher-volume term crude contracts starting in January with suppliers such as Iraq and Russian to feed new refineries coming online in the first quarter. PetroChina's $6 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in southwest Sichuan province entered commercial production in April after test operations since January.
But crude runs may be capped as refineries entered the peak maintenance season. PetroChina shut its largest 410,000-bpd Dalian refinery for maintenance from April 10 to late May, industry sources have said. Other plants conducting maintenance last month included Sinopec's Changling, Shijiazhuang as well as PetroChina's Dagang, industry sources said. China returned to be a net oil product importer in April, after becoming net oil product exporter in March for the first time since January 2010.
It imported 2.54 million tonnes of refined oil products in April and exported 2.2 million tonnes, leaving net imports to 340,000 tonnes, the data showed.
China's implied oil demand fell 0.6 percent in the first quarter of this year as a slowing economy dampened energy use.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.