China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) maintained its joint oil and gas production in 2020 compared to 2019.
In sum, oil and gas production was 459.02 million barrels of oil equivalent last year, an increase of 0.02% year-on-year.
On the one hand, Sinopec’s crude oil production was 280,222 million barrels, a 1.4% annual drop.
On the other hand, its natural gas production amounted to 1,072.33 trillion cubic feet (Bcf), a growth of 2.3% year-on-year.
In 2020, the world economy suffered a severe recession due to the Covid-19 outbreak and its rapid spread around the world.
With a year-on-year decline of 35.2%, Platt’s Brent spot price for last year averaged $ 41.67 per barrel.
Along with changes in China‘s energy mix, domestic demand for natural gas continued to grow, but the growth rate slowed due to the pandemic.
According to statistics released by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), national apparent consumption of natural gas reached 324 billion cubic meters, an increase of 5.6% year-on-year.
Sinopec
Meanwhile, in 2020, domestic demand for refined petroleum products declined and supply exceeded demand.
According to statistics released by the NDRC, the apparent consumption of refined petroleum products (including gasoline, diesel and kerosene) was 331 million tons, 4.1% less than the previous year.
Among them, Sinopec said, in the first half of the year, affected by the pandemic, demand decreased 6.0 percent.
Then, in the second half, demand improved with the steady resumption of work and production nationwide.
For the full year, gasoline, diesel, and kerosene fell 0.7%, 1.2%, and 30.4%, respectively.
Sinopec indicated that there were 13 price adjustments for domestic refined petroleum products during the year with 8 increases and 5 decreases.
Ethylene
According to Sinopec, in 2020, the demand for medical raw materials and packaging materials grew rapidly.
The recovery of exports in the second semester also boosted the growth in demand for chemical products.
According to statistics it grew rapidly, the internal consumption of ethylene equivalent increased by 12.2% with respect to the previous year and the apparent consumption of synthetic resin, synthetic fiber and synthetic rubber grew by 8.9, 3.3 and 8.4%, respectively.
