China’s four state-owned refiners (Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC and Sinochem) reduced their combined run rates from 81.5% in September to a five-month low of 80.6% in October, an industry survey showed. This is expected to extend the decline in China’s crude throughput, which hit a 17-month low of 13.7 million bpd in September. The four refining giants planned to process a total of 7.67 million bpd of crude this month, compared to last month’s 7.7 million bpd and their combined nameplate capacity of 9.52 million bpd.
Sinopec led the decline in utilisation rates among the state-backed refiners. The company’s run rates dropped two percentage points from September to 82% in October. The decrease mainly reflected planned maintenance work at several plants. It shut the 260,000 bpd Gaoqiao Petrochemical on October 8 and the 264,000 bpd Guangzhou Petrochemical at the end of October. These two plants are expected to resume operations by December.
In contrast, PetroChina increased its utilisation rate by one percentage point to about 76%. The company raised throughput in some of its refineries to meet oil products demand in the second half of October. PetroChina’s Lanzhou Petrochemical, Sichuan Petrochemical, and Urumqi Petrochemical raised rates by about two to seven percentage points to supply more gasoil during the month. Sinochem’s crude throughput also recovered following the replacement of the catalyst at its Quanzhou plant.
The survey also showed that run rates at independent refineries in Shandong provinces slipped to 66.7% as of October 27 from 67.1% in September and 66.8% in August. Hengli Petrochemical in Dalian cut its run rates from 91% in September to 90% in October. Meanwhile, Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical (ZPC) Phase-1 complex utilised on average 70% of its capacity in early October, relatively steady from September. ZPC shut down one of its CDUs for several days this month because of a feedstock shortage.
