Menu
Crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, diesel, propane, and other liquids including biofuels and natural gas liquids.
Exploration and reserves, storage, imports and exports, production, prices, sales.
Sales, revenue and prices, power plants, fuel use, stocks, generation, trade, demand & emissions.
Energy use in homes, commercial buildings, manufacturing, and transportation.
Reserves, production, prices, employment and productivity, distribution, stocks, imports and exports.
Includes hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and ethanol.
Uranium fuel, nuclear reactors, generation, spent fuel.
Comprehensive data summaries, comparisons, analysis, and projections integrated across all energy sources.
Monthly and yearly energy forecasts, analysis of energy topics, financial analysis, congressional reports.
Financial market analysis and financial data for major energy companies.
Greenhouse gas data, voluntary reporting, electric power plant emissions.
Maps, tools, and resources related to energy disruptions and infrastructure.
State energy information, including overviews, rankings, data, and analyses.
Maps by energy source and topic, includes forecast maps.
International energy information, including overviews, rankings, data, and analyses.
Regional energy information including dashboards, maps, data, and analyses.
Tools to customize searches, view specific data sets, study detailed documentation, and access time-series data.
EIA’s free and open data available as API, Excel add-in, bulk files, and widgets
Come test out some of the products still in development and let us know what you think!
Forms EIA uses to collect energy data including descriptions, links to survey instructions, and additional information.
Sign up for email subcriptions to receive messages about specific EIA products
Subscribe to feeds for updates on EIA products including Today in Energy and What’s New.
Short, timely articles with graphics on energy, facts, issues, and trends.
Lesson plans, science fair experiments, field trips, teacher guide, and career corner.
Reports requested by congress or otherwise deemed important.
Crude oil processing, or refinery runs, in China averaged 14.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023, an all-time high. The record processing came as the economy and refinery capacity grew in China following the country’s COVID-19 pandemic responses in 2022.
China has increased refinery capacity more than any other country in recent years, partially to meet the country’s transportation fuel needs but also to produce feedstocks for its petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals are the essential building blocks to produce plastics, resins, and fibers widely used in consumer goods, packaging, and textiles. In recent years, capacity additions in China have been integrated with petrochemical facilities, increasing production of petrochemical feedstocks such as naphtha and liquefied petroleum gases (LPG), which include propane and butane.
Naphtha is a light hydrocarbon that is further processed to blend into motor gasoline in essentially all U.S. refineries. Much of the petrochemical feedstock for U.S. petrochemical producers comes from ethane and LPG, which can be separated and sold from natural gas processing plants.
In contrast, many petrochemical producers in Europe and Asia use mostly naphtha (rather than ethane) and LPG as petrochemical feedstocks. Naphtha, LPG, and ethane are used to produce industrial chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, and paraxylene, which are ultimately converted into intermediate or end-use products. Developing integrated refining and petrochemical complexes provides flexibility for these facilities to shift production toward either transportation fuels or petrochemical feedstocks, depending on market conditions.
China’s growing petrochemical sector has made the country one of the world’s largest petrochemical producers. As a result, China’s petrochemical manufacturers need the increased naphtha and LPG produced from China’s refineries, even as China continues to import the two feedstocks.
According to trade press, Chinese companies plan to add more capacity, including the 400,000-b/d Yulong refining and petrochemical complex, which was supposed to open in 2024 but is now delayed to 2025.
The relative prices of crude oil, motor gasoline, petrochemical products, and petrochemical feedstocks can influence naphtha and LPG pricing. Petrochemical margins in Asia have been low or negative since 2022, based on data from Bloomberg, L.P., because petrochemical manufacturing has expanded rapidly in China at a time when high inflation and slower GDP growth has slowed demand.
Principal contributor: Jeff Barron
Tags: refineries, China, liquid fuels, crude oil, oil/petroleum, refining