Oil: covid reduces Chinese demand by 1 million barrels a day. Nevertheless…
Chinese refineries are expected to reduce their distillation activities extremely sharply – by 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) – since the start of the pandemic in 2020, as new lockdowns for COVID weigh on fuel consumption, according to reports. from Reuters.
China's demand, especially gasoline demand, has suffered a steep drop in recent weeks as authorities continue with their “zero COVID” policy and lock down large cities and areas to contain a wave of infections. More recently, China has blocked 26 million residents in the economic center of Shanghai, and with all these people at home, no one uses cars and therefore fuel …
The return of extreme lockdowns to expanding covid prompted analysts to lower expectations about oil demand in the world's leading black gold importer and, by extension, global oil demand for this quarter and full year 2022.
According to Reuters' calculations, refineries in China are now expected to reduce runs this month by nearly 1 million barrels per day, which would be equivalent to 6.3% of the average production of Chinese refineries in recent months. This is one-tenth of the daily Russian oil production. In addition, several independent refineries have reduced their output for a series of scheduled maintenance on the plants-
Lower refinery production in China raises concerns about immediate oil demand in the world's leading crude oil importer and could weigh on world prices in the coming weeks.
Earlier this week, both OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) cited weakening Chinese demand as a key factor, adding this factor to the effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Oil demand is expected to average 99.4 million barrels per day this year, the IEA said Wednesday, cutting its 2022 demand outlook by 260,000 barrels per day to reflect the return of severe blockages in China. On Tuesday, OPEC also cut its oil demand growth estimate for 2022 by nearly 500,000 barrels per day in the wake of lower global economic growth projected with the Russian war in Ukraine and the return of the COVID blockade in China. Despite this, the prices remain very high.
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The article Oil: covid reduces Chinese demand by 1 million barrels a day. Yet… it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/petrolio-il-covid-riduce-di-1-milione-di-barili-al-giorno-la-domanda-cinese-eppure/ on Fri, 15 Apr 2022 07:00:22 +0000.