REFINERY NEWS ROUNDUP: China s July oil product exports fall on quota shortages hellenicshippingnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hellenicshippingnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
China’s crude throughput to fall in July on independent refiner cuts, quota limits
China’s crude throughput in July will likely fall slightly from the record high in June as expected cuts by private refiners over the month amid adverse weather offset the impact of mostly steady run rates at state-owned refiners.
The average utilization rate of China’s four state-owned refineries was around 82% in July, steady compared with 82.4% in June, a four-month high, according to S&P Global Platts July 26. The four state-run oil companies Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC and Sinochem plan to process a total 32.06 million mt of crudes, or 7.58 million b/d of crude in July, against their nameplate capacity of 9.24 million b/d. This compared with their earlier plan of processing 31.07 million mt, or 7.59 million b/d, of crude in June.
Japan ENEOS shut its sole crude distillation unit at the 120,000 b/d Marifu refinery in western Japan on June 22 after a fire, a company official said. The fire broke out around 8:55 pm local time June 20 from a 27,000 b/d continuous catalytic reformer, and the CCR and some desulfurization units were shut right after the fire. “We are shutting down all units [for safety reasons],” the company official said, adding that it was not immediately clear when the company would be able to restart those units. Japan’s ENEOS restarted the sole 141,000 b/d crude distillation unit at its Sakai refinery in western Japan on June 24 after completing scheduled maintenance, a spokesperson said June 28.
REFINERY NEWS ROUNDUP: China crude throughput jumps in Q1, slows in April
Chinese refiners’ crude throughput in the first quarter posted the strongest year-on-year growth since 2010, rising 17.8% to 14.17 million b/d as the country’s GDP grew 18.3% on the year from a low base given the COVID-19 outbreak during the same period of last year, data released April 16 by the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
On top of the strong GDP growth, the year-on-year increase was also due to the expansion in refining capacity since Q2 last year, including the startup of Sinopec’s 200,000 b/d Zhanjiang Petrochemical and the trial run of Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical’s phase 2 project involving its 200,000 b/d CDU.
Japan Japan s ENEOS said April 16 it has restarted its Sendai refinery in northeast Japan, which had been suspended since the strong earthquake offshore Fukushima on Feb. 13. ENEOS initially planned to restart the Sendai refinery in the first half of April. However, another earthquake of magnitude 6.9 occurred off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, northeast Japan, on March 20. Then ENEOS delayed the restart schedule to mid-April. Japan s largest refiner ENEOS has restarted the sole 129,000 b/d crude distillation unit at the Chiba refinery in Tokyo Bay after completing scheduled maintenance on April 22, a spokesman said April 23. Japan s ENEOS said April 20 it shut the 170,000 b/d No. 2 crude distillation unit at its 247,000 b/d Kawasaki refinery in Tokyo bay on April 10 for unplanned repair work on a valve, and expected to restart at the end of April.