China Leads Global Refining Boom

China will lead global refinery capacity expansion and investments with 3.12 million bpd additional refining capacity and US$67.3 billion capital expenditure through 2022, data and analytics company GlobalData said in a new report.

Total refining capacity in the world is expected to grow by 15.1 percent between 2018 and 2022, with global crude distillation units (CDU) capacity expected to hit 117 million bpd by 2022, GlobalData said in its report.

Asia will lead the pack with the highest planned and announced CDU capacity of 5.4 million bpd in 2022, followed by Africa and the Middle East with 3.2 million bpd and 2.7 million bpd, respectively. In capital expenditure (capex), Asia will again be the leader with expected capex for new build refineries of US$194.9 billion, followed by Africa and the Middle East, with US$126.6 billion and US$87.1 billion, respectively, GlobalData has estimated.

Among individual countries, China is the leader, with ten new-build refineries expected to come on line by 2022, followed by Nigeria and Kuwait. The top ten also includes Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia, GlobalData’s report shows.

“China’s ambitious refinery capacity expansion programme continues fuelled by the country’s industrial growth, and growing demand from the transportation sector. The capacity expansion program is powering China’s crude imports, and will transform the country to become a strong contender for exports of petroleum products globally,” Sumit Kumar Chaudhuri, Oil & Gas Analyst at GlobalData, said, as carried by East African Business Week.

Last month, Chinese refiners processed a record daily amount of crude oil. At a calculated 12.49 million bpd, the September run rate of Chinese refineries was more than 600,000 bpd higher than the August figure.

According to the GlobalData report, Nigeria is also planning a massive refinery expansion to meet growing domestic demand for petroleum products. The African OPEC member is expected to expand its CDU capacity by 2.003 million bpd, spending US$57.6 billion. Kuwait will add 615,000 bpd of CDU capacity by 2022, and is expected to spend US$7.5 billion through 2022.

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