China’s refiners increased their output in July to close to 12 million barrels per day (bpd), but at the same time exports of refined fuels fell to the lowest in four months. These facts may seem contradictory, and while there are several issues than can help explain the dynamics, perhaps the most compelling is that China appears to be becoming more attuned to market forces for refined products in Asia. As is often the case with China’s intake and processing of crude oil and its exports of refined products, the data is incomplete, and in this case the main missing numbers are movements in inventories. Inventory data was last released in April, so it’s hard to know how much of the refinery throughput went into storage tanks, as […]