Platts: China's oil demand rose 2.6% in July

According to government data released on August 18, an analysis by Platts revealed that China’s apparent oil demand increased by 2.58% year-on-year to 35.82 million tons (825 million barrels per day) in July this year, due to rising processing volume of crude oil. The net import volume of refined oil dropped significantly.

China does not publish official oil demand statistics. Platts calculates oil demand based on official data on Chinese crude oil processing volume and net oil product imports.

Demand in July fell by 2.5% from 36.74 million tons (898 million barrels/day) in June.

In the first seven months of this year, China’s apparent oil demand was 246.63 million tons, or an average of 8.3 million barrels per day, an increase of 11.4% from the 221.34 million tons in January-July 2009.

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics last week, China's crude oil processing volume in July this year was 35.28 million tons, or an average of 8.34 million barrels per day, a year-on-year increase of 6.55% but 0.2% lower than the 35.35 million tons in June. Data show that in July China's total oil production reached 27.54 million tons, an increase of 7.86%.

In July of this year, China's refined oil imports amounted to 3.14 million tons, a year-on-year decrease of 22.28%, and a decrease of 13.74% from 3.64 million tons in June. In addition, the volume of refined oil exports rose by 16.6% year-on-year to 2.6 million tons, up 15.5% from 2.25 million tons in June.