According to the preliminary data of China’s General Administration of Customs, oil imports rose by 27% to 29.49 million tons or 7.2 million barrels a day in June. The country became the world’s leader among other fuel importers.
The growth of foreign fuel imports was logged in view of implementation of a program for increasing oil inventories. A new oil refinery of 3 million cubic meters started operating in Qingdao (Shandong Province). In the third quarter, another refinery will be opened in Huizhou.
“Filling of the strategic reserves in Qingdao definitely played a part in the increase. China will overtake the US as a permanent top crude importer in a year or two,” Amy Sun, an analyst at ICIS China, said.
In the first half of the year, crude imports grew by 7.5% that is 2.5% slower than the print in the same period of 2014. The drop in imports was also caused by the fact that the country’s GDP growth rate slowed down to 6.8% in the period April to June against the 7% growth three months earlier.
Meanwhile, China’s June aluminum exports reached the highest level of 450,000 tons on month and 2.5 million tons in the period January to June 2015.
