Since the new Russia-China oil supply agreement took effect at the start of the year, PetroChina’s largest refinery has almost doubled the amount of Russian pipeline crude oil that it is processing, a senior industry source with direct knowledge of the volumes told Reuters on Wednesday. According to the source, the 410,000-bpd PetroChina refinery in the northeast port city Dalian will process 260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude oil in 2018, up by 85-90 percent compared to 2017. The higher volumes of Russian pipeline crude will replace seaborne Russian shipments of the ESPO blend from the Kozmino port in the Russian Far East and crude oil shipments from the Middle East, the industry source told Reuters. “The plant will be processing pipeline crude only this year,” the source noted, and added that the PetroChina-run Daqing oil field also ships pipeline crude to the Dalian refinery. An extension of the […]