China’s independent refiners known as teapots have used up the amount of imported crude that the government allocated to them in January, which means imports are likely to slow down through June, Platts estimates . That’s the month when Beijing will hold a second round of quotas. The January quotas had 45.64 million metric tons of imported crude distributed among the teapots, most of which has already been processed. This amount is close to that allocated to teapots for the whole of last year: 60 million tons. As a portion of total Chinese crude oil imports, the 2016 quota allocations were equal to 16 percent. The reason for the premature emptying of the tanks was that the 2017 allocations were based on how much each independent refiner had imported in January-October 2016, so those whose imports were higher in the last two months of the year received a lower […]