China: a +10% increase in fuel demand is expected in 2024
Fuel demand in China is set to rise 10% this quarter compared to the same period in 2022 thanks to the latest economic stimulus policies, said Huang Yongzhang, president of state energy giant PetroChina.
“In the fourth quarter, China's economic stimulus policy will yield greater results, domestic consumption is expected to rebound further… and demand for industrial products will improve,” Huang told investors in an online roadshow, as reported by Reuters.
The situation is exactly the opposite of what we have seen for Germany in recent days, where a drop in oil imports of 90 thousand barrels is expected, as written just yesterday .
PetroChina, the country's second-largest refiner after Sinopec , reported record net profit growth of 21% year-on-year earlier this week, with third-quarter earnings of $6.3 billion thanks to rising production and growth in domestic fuel demand.
The company reported a 4.3% year-over-year increase in crude oil production in the first nine months of this year and a 6.1% increase in natural gas production.
While PetroChina saw oil and gas prices decline in the first nine months of this year, rising domestic fuel demand allowed it to increase production and boost net profit.
Total fuel sales increased 13.4% from a year earlier, with a 17% increase in domestic sales, as the company, Asia's largest oil and gas producer, capitalized early on China's macroeconomic recovery.
The 10% increase that PetroChina expects for the country's fuel demand in the current quarter comes from a low level of comparison with the October-December quarter of 2022, when China was still under strict Covid lockdowns that limited mobility and travel and weighed on the economy.
China has seen strengthening domestic fuel growth in recent months, despite a weak start to reopening. But fears of slowing fuel demand in China resurfaced on Tuesday after data showed factory activity unexpectedly contracted in October. The Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell into contraction territory in October, to 49.5 from 50.2 in September, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, but more on that later.
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The article China: a +10% in fuel demand is expected in 2024 comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-nel-2024-ci-si-attende-un-10-nella-domanda-di-carburanti/ on Wed, 01 Nov 2023 06:30:43 +0000.