China refiners grapple with poor margins

摘要

Singapore-The recent rapid drop in global oil prices has left Chinese refiners grappling with negative margins as they struggle with processing crude purchased at higher prices a few months ago and concurrently selling oil products at lower prices. “Most of the crude imports that arrived this month are priced against the average price of the loading period in the previous month,” a source at the West Pacific Petrochemical Corp. refinery in Dalian said last week. “When those crudes are processed into oil products, the price of those oil products will be much lower if the crude price continues to drop.”