Demand from some of the most coveted oil buyers may slow this year because they didn’t purchase all that they could in 2016. While China’s private refiners have received their first batch of quotas to buy foreign crude in 2017 and may get approval to purchase more later, the amount probably won’t exceed 2016 volumes, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. That’s because the government is cutting allocations for those who bought less last year. What the processors have been allowed to directly import in the latest tranche is 62 percent of 2016’s total levels, the bank said in a report. The refiners, known as teapots, have been wooed by everyone from producers such as Saudi Arabia to oil traders including Trafigura Group as a global supply glut stoked competition among sellers. While benchmark crude prices are gaining from their worst crash in a generation amid supply curbs by […]