Beijing flagged its intention in March to force plants to produce less transport fuels and more petrochemicals, as electrification rapidly undermines traditional energy usage. Refining profits have only worsened since then, while Beijing’s efforts to combat involution across industries has taken on greater urgency due to persistent deflationary and trade pressures on the economy.
While China is the largest importer of Russian oil, it tends to take deliveries from the nation’s Far East. Yet so far in August, shipments of Urals – which loads from Baltic and Black Sea ports – were almost 75,000 barrels a day. That’s almost double the year-to-date average of about 40,000 barrels, according to Kpler. In contrast, exports to India sunk to no more than 400,000 barrels a day this month, compared with the average of 1.18 million.
Refinery rates went up to 14.85 million barrels daily last month, the report also said, which was an 8.9% increase from July 2024, but at the same time, it was a 2% decline from June 2025. The utilization rate at Chinese refineries, however, rose both on an annual and on a monthly basis, reinforcing the perception of an improvement in demand.
China has sped up new coal power plan approvals again. After a decline in new permits last year, these are once again on the rise, Greenpeace complained recently. China approved 11.29 GW of new coal power capacity in the first quarter of 2025. This pace of coal-fired generation capacity approvals already exceeds the 10 GW China approved in the first half of 2024.
The Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP) is the key to unlock massive gains in oil output from Iraq. Consequently, control over the project is pivotal to gaining control over the country’s enormous oil and gas resources.
In a later statement, India’s foreign ministry said that oil import decisions were “based on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4bn people of India”. A spokesperson for the ministry said that “It is therefore extremely unfortunate that the US should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest. We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”
Chinese coal purchases for the first half of 2025 were down by 11% from a year ago, to 221.7 million tons. Imports for the full year are set to be between 50 million tons and 100 million tons lower compared to 2024, the local industry association, China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association, said last month. Factors affecting imports include the real estate sector crisis, weaker industrial growth, and the increase in domestic production.
The Chinese companies are replacing Western oil and gas majors who left Iraq in search of greener pastures. CNPC took over the West Qurna 1 field last year and plans to boost its capacity to 1.2 million barrels daily by 2035. West Qurna 1 is one of the largest oil fields in the world, with reserves estimated at more than 20 billion barrels of recoverable hydrocarbons. Currently, it produces around 550,000 barrels daily.
The supply restrictions have meanwhile inflated the prices of the critical minerals, the report also said. According to defense industry traders, some of these now cost five times as much as they used to, and in at least one case, a critical mineral cost 60 times as much as it used to before Beijing started to restrict supply.
“CNOOC Ltd. has adopted an innovative combined development approach of ‘conventional water injection + steam huff and puff + steam flooding’, providing strong technical support for the efficient utilization of oil reserves”, it added. “The project’s platform integrates both conventional cold production and thermal recovery systems, and is equipped with over 240 sets of key equipment.