China’s crude oil imports fell 9.4% in August from a year earlier, customs data showed on Wednesday, as outages at state-run refineries and lower operations at independent plants amid weak margins capped buying.

The world’s largest crude importer brought in 40.35 million tonnes of crude oil last month, equivalent to about 9.5 million barrels per day (bpd), data from the General Administration of Customs showed.

That compared to 8.79 million bpd in July and 10.49 million bpd in August 2021.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Muyu Xu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)