China’s November crude oil throughput up 3.9% on fresh import quotas

BEIJING: China’s crude oil throughput rose 3.9% in November, statistics bureau data showed on Monday, as a new batch of crude oil import quotas for independent refiners offset maintenance at some state-owned refineries.

The world’s largest oil producer processed 60.83 million metric tons of oil in the month, equivalent to 14.86 million barrels per day (bpd).

That was little changed from October’s 14.94 million bpd. About 1.2 million bpd of refining capacity was offline in November for maintenance, weighing on throughput, said Muyu Xu, senior crude oil analyst at Kpler.

But after independent refiners received new import quotas, their run rates rose to a high for this year of 64%, Xu said.

“Looking ahead, we expect December throughput to remain largely stable from November levels, as maintenance at state-owned refineries continues while teapots further lift run rates.”

Independent refiners are also known as teapots.

Crude oil throughput from January to November was 675.07 million tons, up 4% from the year-earlier level.

The statistics bureau data also showed that China’s crude oil production in November was 17.63 million tons, up 2.2% from a year earlier.

Output in the first 11 months of the year was 198.25 million tons, up 1.7%.

Natural gas production rose 5.7% in November from a year earlier to 21.9 billion cubic meters (bcm). Output to the end of November was 238.9 bcm, up 6.3%.