China’s refinery output in May rises 8.2% from a year earlier

China’s daily crude oil throughput in May rose 8.2% from a year earlier, as independent refiners increased their processing to meet the recovery in fuel demand following the easing of coronavirus lockdowns.

China processed 57.9 million tonnes of crude oil last month, equivalent to about 13.63 million barrels per day (bpd), data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Monday showed. That is compared with 13.1 million bpd in April.

For the first five months, throughput totalled 261.39 million tonnes, 1% below year-ago levels because of large processing cuts in February and March.

May processing rates were below last December’s all-time high of 13.78 million bpd because of scheduled maintenance at some plants. PetroChina’s Dalian Petrochemical Corp and Sinopec Corp’s Tianjin Petrochemical Corp were undergoing overhauls. The two plants have a combined processing capacity of 660,000 bpd.