China's refinery runs in June dipped 0.6% year on year to 35.98 million mt, or an average 8.79 million b/d, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website Friday.
This is the lowest daily processing rate seen since October last year and is more indication of a slowing economy in China.
The NBS said Friday China's GDP growth in the second quarter grew by 7.6%, the slowest pace since the first quarter of 2009 during the global financial crisis. This pulled down China's overall first half economic growth to 7.8%, following 8.1% in the first quarter.
China's crude oil imports in June fell to the lowest monthly level so far in 2012 at 21.72 million mt, or an average 5.31 million b/d, despite posting a 10.3% year-on-year increase, customs data released July 10 showed.
China's refinery runs have now contracted year on year for three months running. June's crude throughput was down from May's 9.06 million b/d and April's 9.03 million b/d. This brings average refinery runs in the second quarter to 8.96 million b/d, compared with 9.01 million b/d in Q2 2011. They were also down from 9.26 million b/d in Q1 this year.
The NBS said total refinery runs in the first half rose 1.7% on year to 228.92 million mt, or 9.22 million b/d. But this figure does not tally with the sum of the data from the individual months, which totals 226.18 million mt.
The NBS did not indicate if any revisions had been made to previously released data.
China's state-owned refiners cut crude runs to 81% of nameplate capacity in June, from 83% in May, a Platts monthly survey showed June 20. This was due to some Sinopec refineries continuing maintenance as well as poorer demand for gasoline and gasoil.
The survey covered 16 Sinopec refineries, 12 PetroChina refineries and CNOOC's Huizhou refinery with a combined processing capacity of around 289.8 million mt/year (5.82 million b/d).
The 29 refineries surveyed planned to process 19.24 million mt of crude oil in June, or 4.7 million b/d, accounting for around 81% of their nameplate capacity.
This contrasts with the 83% utilization rate of the 21 state-owned refineries which were surveyed in May.
Sinopec's 16 surveyed refineries were expected to operate at 82% of their combined nameplate capacity, down from May's average rate of 84%.
PetroChina and Sinopec have combined installed crude distillation capacity of around 8 million b/d.
In July, the refiners are expected to reduce their run rates further on increasingly weak fundamental demand, Platts reported previously. Runs will also likely fall on lower refining margins following the government's latest retail oil product price cut of around 5% on Wednesday.
