In November, Chinese state refiners are raising their average utilization rate on the back of higher demand while independent refiners increase their run rates on the back of good refining margins.
The four state-owned refiners posted an average utilization rate of 82.6% this month, up from 80.6% in October which was the lowest in five months. They plan to process a total of 7.8 million bpd of crudes in November when their nameplate capacity is 9.44 million bpd.
In comparison, last month they planned throughput of 7.67 million bpd against their nameplate capacity of 9.52 million bpd.
Among them, Sinopec leads the increase this month as it increased run rates by 2 percentage points from October to 84% to process 4.376 million bpd. The number comes despite the scheduled maintenance at three of its refineries as its other refineries raised throughputs on a monthly basis.
This month, PetroChina expanded its run rates by 1 percentage point further to 77.4% to score a second straight month of increase. The company has to fulfill its commitments to increase gasoil output to meet domestic demand and required refineries to boost throughputs and gasoil output.
For independent refiners, the average run rate at Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical has generally improved after the allocation of the 12 million tons quotas to its Phase 2 project of 400,000 bpd around October 25.
As of November 26, the small-sized refineries in eastern Shandong province had their run rates climb slightly to around 68.6% compared to 66.7% in the end of October as margins remained good throughout the month.
The Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) run rates have been relatively stable, at around 90%, compared with 90% in October, and 91% in September.