Thursday 24 March 2016

Asia to drive growth in crude refining capacity

Asia is to lead the global growth in crude refining capacity to 2020.

That’s according to new research which suggests capacity is expected to “increase strongly” from 92.6 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2015 to 118mb/d by 2020.

It will be led by China and Southeast Asia, it adds.

In Europe, growth will occur “at a substantially slower rate”. Although demand is decreasing and less competitive older refineries are being closed in Western Europe, they are being countered by investment in Russia.

That leads to Europe’s crude refining capacity increasing marginally from 21.7mb/d to 22.5mb/d by the end of the decade.

Following Asia, the market is expected to be dominated by North America and Europe.

Matthew Jurecky, GlobalData’s Head of Oil & Gas Research and Consulting said: “The global refining landscape continues its shift eastwards. 40% of global crude distillation unit (CDU) capacity is projected to be in Asia by 2020, up from around 30% in 2010.

"China has led this growth and is projected to have a 15% share of global CDU capacity by 2020. This activity is putting pressure on other regional refiners, especially now that China has become a net exporter and will become a larger one.”