1/19/2026 12:00:00 PM
China’s refinery throughput in 2025 rose 4.1% year on year, while crude oil output grew 1.5%, both all-time highs, government data showed. The world’s second largest oil consumer processed 737.59 million metric tons of crude oil in 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
That is the equivalent of about 14.75 million barrels a day (bpd), Reuters calculations showed, exceeding the previous record of 14.7 million bpd, set in 2023.
“Chinese refining runs on average grew by 0.25 million barrels per day year on year in 2025, driven by capacity expansion among national oil companies and the ramp-up of the private mega Yulong refinery,” said Jianan Sun, an analyst at consultancy Energy Aspects.
Energy Aspects expects runs at small refineries known as teapots to keep resilient, while the start-up of Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Co. to continue to support Chinese runs this year, rising by about 250,000 bpd.
The increase in throughput also came amid a slowdown in LPG import growth, which was dampened by potential tariffs, said Ye Lin, vice president at Rystad Energy.
A 2025 tariff war with the United States challenged China’s use of imported propane and ethane for steam crackers, prompting the domestic refining sector to shift from road fuels to crude-based petrochemical feedstocks, including naphtha and LPG, Ye added.
China processed 62.46 million tons of crude oil in December 2025, or 14.7 million bpd, and produced 17.8 million tons of crude oil, or 4.19 million bpd, both slowing from November.
Total crude oil output gained 1.5% on the year at 216.05 million tons, or 4.32 million bpd, as state oil firms stepped up drilling both offshore and of unconventional resources in the final year of a seven-year energy security policy launched in 2019 to boost output.
The drivers of the growth are CNOOC’s rising offshore oil production and the recent introduction of oil fields in the Bohai Sea and South China Sea, said Chen Lin, vice president at Rystad Energy.
Bohai, CNOOC’s largest oilfield cluster and now also China’s top oil producer, contributed more than 37 million tons of crude, or 740,000 bpd in 2025, it said in December.
In a statement the company said the Bohai oilfield’s oil production growth accounted for almost 40% of the national output increase over the past five years.
Rystad also expects shale oil and tight oil production to grow by 14.3 million barrels and 1.9 million barrels each in 2025 on the year.
The data also showed natural gas output expanded 6.2% last year to a record 261.9 billion cubic meters (bcm).
Gas imports, including piped gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped in tankers, fell 2.8% on the year, dragged down by a 10.6% drop in LNG imports, official data showed on Sunday.