BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Commerce recently announced the second batch of crude oil import quotas for non-state trade in 2020, more than two months earlier than the issuance time of previous years, reported Economic Information Daily Monday.
The second batch of quotas are 53.88 million tonnes in total, bringing the total quotas issued in 2020 up to 157.71 million tonnes, said the report.
Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, crude oil demands in the US, Europe, India and elsewhere have fallen sharply, and global oil sellers have turned their eyes to the Chinese market, noted JLC Network Technology Co., Ltd. (JLC), a leading provider of market intelligence and pricing solutions for energy and commodities in China.
Chinese oil refineries have also actively taken in a large number of cost-effective oil, and apart from traditional oil supply in Russia, Brazil and West Africa, oil of the US, the UK and Guyana is also on their purchase list, said JLC.
Lower oil price, nearly 70-percent operational rate of local refineries which is basically to the ceiling, and high refining benefits which is hundreds of yuan or more theoretically, constitute the main reasons driving local refineries to speed up imports, pointed out the report.
According to JLC, domestic supply and demand situation, overall tank inventory, large refining quotas, cash flow and capital quota will affect China's crude oil imports amid the epidemic, and local refineries will continue to expand oil imports by taking advantage of the low prices. (Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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