China Weekly Oil Summary: Planned Maintenance up 18% in 2024

MNI (London) - Planned maintenance at Chinese state refiners is set to be 18% higher this year at a total of 157m tons/yr, according to OilChem. The work will mostly take place in 2Q and 4Q.

• China’s diesel consumption is forecast to decline this year by approximately 1m tons y/y to 194m mt, according to the Sinopec Economics & Development Research Institute.
• China’s refinery runs are expected up +0.06% m/m to 72.52% in February with state plants raising runs while teapots cut.
• Among the Teapots in Shandong, refiners have been opting to pull feedstocks from commercial storages near their facilities rather than target seaborne volumes – a trend growing since mid-December.
• There are conflicting figures on China’s crude imports in January. Vortexa see them down to 9.8mn bpd in January– marking the third consecutive month below 10mn bpd. However, LSEG numbers are higher at 11.31mn bpd, down slightly from 11.44mn bpd in December according to LSEG figures.
• Feedstock imports for crude, bitumen mix and fuel oil to China’s independent refineries in Jan fell to the lowest since June 2022 according to tanker-tracking data by OilChem.
• POLICY: China's CPI fell more than expected by 0.8% y/y in January, falling further from December's 0.3% decline to hit the lowest level since September 2009, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
• FROM THE PRESS: China’s Bulk Commodity Index (CBMI) reached 101.1 in January, up 0.4 points from December, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP).