Slow growth in China’s implied oil demand

October saw one of the slowest growth paces in China’s implied oil demand, and to compensate for trimmed refinery production, oil companies slightly raised fuel imports. Based on preliminary trade and output data, Reuters reported that implied oil demand increased 1.5% year-on-year, with China burning 9.04 million barrels per day (bpd), slightly higher than the 8.9 million bpd in September. However, despite October’s slow growth, there was about a 7% increase in implied consumption for the first 10 months over the same period last year. The first 10 months generated implied oil demand of 9.17 million bpd due mainly to double-digit expansions during the first five months. Scheduled maintenance, including the full shutdown of the 249,000 bpd Huizhou plant in Southern Guangdong, as well as the refinery fire at the Gaoqiao plant in China resulted in 0.9% below year-ago levels in refinery throughput for October. This is the second time levels dipped this year. State refiner Sinopec Corp. and PetroChina increased runs to new peaks, and raised diesel imports to deal with a domestic squeeze that started in early October. China is the world’s second largest oil consumer and this year, it accounts for the more than half of the global fuel demand growth. (November 10, 2011)