China’s oil refinery output slipped 1.8% in May compared to the same period last year, as refiners undertook planned maintenance overhauls and faced pressure from rising crude costs and lagging domestic fuel prices. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), refiners processed 60.52 million metric tons of crude oil in May, equivalent to 14.25 million barrels per day (bpd).
The decline in refinery throughput was attributed to large state-run refineries, such as Sinopec’s Zhenhai and Zhanjiang plants, PetroChina’s Dushanzi and Dalian facilities, and the big private refiner Hengli Petrochemical, which were all undergoing regular maintenance in May. Smaller independent processors, on the other hand, saw a slight uptick in their operational levels to 55.53% of their capacity, up 0.75 percentage points from April, as they were encouraged by slight margin improvements.
However, this was still significantly lower than the 62.2% recorded a year earlier, reflecting the challenges faced by refiners due to higher crude costs and lagging domestic fuel prices. Despite a brief spike in fuel demand during the first week of May for holiday travel, the overall refinery throughput for the January to May period was up just 0.3% from a year earlier at 301.77 million metric tons, or 14.49 million bpd.
On the production side, China’s crude oil output in May rose 0.6% from a year earlier to 18.15 million tons, or about 4.27 million bpd. From January to May, output grew 1.8% on the year at 89.1 million tons, or 4.28 million bpd. Natural gas production also saw a 6.3% increase last month compared to the same period in 2023, reaching 20.3 billion cubic metres (bcm), and output between January and May gained 5.2% to 103.3 bcm.