China’s crude oil imports continue to slump

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China’s crude oil imports continue to be weak, with October marking the sixth consecutive month in which crude cargo arrivals have lagged behind the imports in the same months of 2023, official Chinese data showed on November 7.

Last month, China imported a total of 10.53 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, per data from the General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters. That’s 9% lower compared to October 2023 and 2% below the import level of 11.07 million bpd in September 2024.

Reduced capacity at a PetroChina refinery and continued weak demand from China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots, weighed on the imports into the world’s top crude importer in October.

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PetroChina, which plans to shut its largest Chinese refinery in 2025, has already reportedly shut in about half of the Dalian refinery’s crude processing capacity of 210,000 bpd.

In addition, the private refiners in the Shandong province have been struggling with weak refining margins and have cut processing rates in recent months.

Between January and October, China’s crude oil exports averaged 10.76 million bpd, which is down by 3.4% compared to the same period last year, according to Chinese customs data.

China’s crude oil demand has disappointed so far this year, depressing oil prices and prompting OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to revise down their expectations of global oil demand growth for 2024.

Concerns about oil demand growth in China have weighed on oil prices for most of the second half of the year, when actual consumption data started rolling in and Chinese demand strength may have been overestimated.

Weaker-than-expected oil consumption in China and rising electric vehicle sales will continue to weigh on the world’s oil demand growth going forward, according to the IEA’s Executive Director, Fatih Birol.

“This year, global oil demand is very weak, much weaker than previous years, and we expect this will continue because of one word — China,” Birol told Bloomberg in an interview last month.