China’s crude throughput likely fell in July, weighed on by maintenance at state-owned refineries and amid uneven oil product demand recovery and limited exports, reports SP Global.
The drop
The reduction is unlikely to be offset by a 1.5 percentage points utilization increase in the Shandong independent refineries, suggesting a collective throughput decline on the month in July.
The 21 PetroChina refineries cut their average run rates by about five percentage points to 67.8% in July from June, a 28-month low, due mainly to maintenance at three of the polled refineries.
The three refineries — Dalian Wepec, Hohhot Petrochemical and Huabei Petrochemical — shut a combined capacity of 500,000 b/d for maintenance during the month.
Meanwhile, Sinochem trimmed its Quanzhou Petrochemical’s crude run about 17 percentage points from June, since its 60,000 b/d of crude distillation unit was shut for maintenance from July 1.
Sinopec’s Shanghai Petrochemical remains shut after an explosion in late-June. The refinery was scheduled to restart early August, a company source said.
Run rates at China’s independent refineries were mixed
Hengli started maintenance at one of its 200,000 b/d CDUs in early July, which would last until early August. As a result, the throughput at Hengli was trimmed to around 74% in July, from 82% last month.
The run rate will likely return close to normal levels of around 80% in August after the maintenance, according to a refinery source.
The 800,000 b/d Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical also slightly cut its utilization rate to 82% in July from 84% in June.
Run rates at Shandong independent refineries continue to recover as margins improve when cracking cheap feedstocks.
The average utilization rate at Shandong independent refineries recovered to around 70% as of July 20, up by about 1.5% from a month earlier, data from local energy information provider JLC showed.
Imports
Separately, China’s imports of Russian crude oil fell 10.6% from a record high in May to 1.78 million b/d, or 7.29 million mt, in June, data from the General Administration of Customs showed. The Russian volumes volume represented a 9.5% year-on-year jump in June, despite declining from 1.99 million b/d in May, according to GAC data.
Saudi Arabia remained the top crude supplier to China during the first half of the year, although the volume declined 1.1% year on year to 1.75 million b/d during the period due to a second straight monthly fall in June.
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Source: SP Global
