Major Chinese refineries' operating rates averaged 79.24% on Aug 11, largely flat to 79.08% on Jul 28, C1's research showed.
Maoming Petrochemical and Qilu Petrochemical hiked operation rate by eleven and eight percentage points after maintenance of some secondary units. In addition, Qingdao refinery restarted 10-mil mt/yr refining capacity on Aug 8 and ran at full capacity.
These growths were offset by cuts in other refineries. Dushanzi Petrochemical started maintenance of 10-mil mt/yr of refining capacity ahead of schedule on Aug 9 and Yanshan Petrochemical lowered its operation rate by eight percentage points because of maintenance of an ethylene unit.
The average run rate has hovered low at around 78%-80% since late June when peak maintenance arrived, after hitting 88.6% in the second half of May, C1's record showed. The run rate was also dragged down by recent fires in CNOOC Huizhou refinery and PetroChina Dalian Petrochemical.
The above figures were obtained through computation on the basis of refineries' primary refining capacities. If calculated on the basis of their complex refining ratio, the average run rate would be 85.05%, up by 0.16 percentage points from two weeks ago.
Major refineries' average operation rate is likely to stay low in the rest of August because of maintenance.
C1's research involves 23 refineries with the annual refining capacity amounting to 281-mil mt.
