(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) China's crude oil imports rose 11.9 percent in January from a year earlier to a record 6.63 million barrels per day (bpd), data showed on Wednesday.
The world's top energy consumer took in 28.16 million tones, or 6.63 million bpd, of oil last month, up 5.1 percent from the previous record of 6.31 million in December of last year, according to the General Administration of Custom
Demand for crude appeared less robust than the imports indicate as the top two state refiners Sinopec and PetroChina were due to process 1.9 percent less oil in January than in December, according to energy consultancy ICIS C1. That suggests some of the imports went straight into storag
China will not release its official throughput data for the first two months of this year until mid-Marc
"Refinery throughput is still kind of weak, this high amount of arrivals would mean some of the oil has to land in the tanks," a Beijing-based crude oil trader sai
The higher import purchases also follow a three-month drawdown in China's commercial crude oil inventories over the last quarter of 201
China's implied oil demand growth dropped to its lowest in more than two decades in 2013, coming in at just 1.6 percent as softer economic growth sliced into consumption of transportation and industrial fuels such as diese
Oil markets largely dismissed the record Chinese import figures, with Brent crude futures holding steady near $109 a barrel
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