China’s crude refinery throughput in March rose 5.9% year on year to 47.5 million mt, or an average of 11.23 million b/d, preliminary data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics showed. This was the highest year-on-year growth in refinery runs since September 2015. The last highest year-on-year growth in refinery runs was 6.5% in August 2015. On a daily basis, however, the refinery throughput was slightly down from the average of 11.28 million b/d over January-February. The average for the first two months of the year was combined as NBS does not provide separate data for January and February. The drop in refinery runs was somehow in line with the trend showed by a survey done by S&P Global Platts in March — some of the largest state-owned refiners in China saw average utilization rate move down to 79% of nameplate capacity, compared with 85% in February […]