Page 7 - AsianOil Week 29 2020

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China’s July oil imports

on track to set new record

PERFORMANCE CHINA’S crude oil imports could set an all-time
high of 14.4mn barrels per day (bpd) in July,
Reuters reported this week citing ship-tracking
data.
Seaborne arrivals are on track to eclipse the
12.99mn bpd the country received in June, the
newswire quoted Refinitiv analyst Emma Li as
saying on July 23.
With that much oil in transit to China’s
shores, maritime congestion at the country’s
oil port hubs is set to intensify. Around 120mn
barrels of crude was waiting to be discharged as
of July 23, according to Refinitiv data, up from
80mn barrels at the start of the month.
Li said it took on average three to four weeks
for oil tankers offshore Shandong Province’s
Qingdao-Rizhao area to discharge their cargoes,
with vessels offshore other major ports having
seen wait times blow out from around a week to
a fortnight. Shandong is home to the majority of SIA Energy analyst Seng Yick Tee observed
the country’s independent refiners. that commercial crude inventories had grown
FGE analyst Jiyao Chen, meanwhile, told the to 1.12bn barrels by the end of June, enough to
newswire that it could take up to eight weeks allow the country’s refineries to match 2019’s
to work through 70-80mn barrels of oil stored refining rates for three months without addi-
offshore. tional purchases.
An unnamed official at the port of Zhoushan Longzhong Information analyst Li Yan noted
suggested that depending upon terminal and that the average operating rates of Shandong’s
storage tank turnover rates, the congestion could teapot refineries had eased to 74% this week
drag on beyond the end of August. “It’s just so from June’s record of 76%.
hard to find available storage space,” he said. Reuters, citing its own calculations, said plans
China’s refiners have been binge-buying were underway to add 13.66mn cubic metres
cheap oil following the collapse of international (85.92mn barrels) of storage space across in
prices in March. While run rates soared to a Shandong this year.
record high of 14.14mn bpd in June, according “We are accelerating the construction process of
to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data, there new storage tanks in order to help ease the port con-
is growing doubt that China’s downstream oper- gestion as soon as possible,” the newswire quoted
ators can keep this rate up indefinitely. an unnamed Rizhao Port official as saying.™

Week 29 23•July•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P7