Shandong independent refineries witnessed a downtrend in imported feedstock inventory recently, and the storage rate was at 49.10% by March 15, a year-on-year decrease of 3.57 percentage points, and a decrease of 0.59 percentage points from this year's high, under the impact of concentrated unit maintenance, according to OilChem.
Specifically, Zibo Xintai Petrochemical overhauled unit by turns from mid-to-late February, China Overseas Energy & Technology (Shandong) shut down unit from late February, and Shandong Zhonghai Chemical Group Dongying Petrochemical took unit under maintenance in March. In addition, Dongying Lianhe Petrochemical plans to overhaul unit in April, Shandong Qicheng Petrochemical and Shandong Kenli Petrochemical Group might close unit for maintenance in May, learned from OilChem.
Shandong independent refinery had a strong interest in Russian crude oil, due to ample crude oil import quotas and low import price, and other refining feedstock, such as cutback bitumen and blended fuel oil also attracted attention. However, affected by large-scale maintenance, the demand for imported feedstock weakened recently, according to OilChem.
OilChem expects that Shandong independent refinery will have a stable demand for imported refining feedstock in the second quarter, but concentrated maintenance might put a cap on demand.
Written by Catherine Sun, sss@oilchem.net
Edited by Navy Liu, navy@oilchem.net