Chinese refinery output grows
January 21, 2026
The government of Venezuela got it first payment from the sale of oil by the US government that generated $500 million dollars. Venezuela got roughly $00 million dollars of much needed money injected into their economy for the first time in months.
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 on Monday. 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 14.75 million barrels a day, exceeding the previous record of 14.7 million barrels per day in 2023.
Prices rallied yesterday on the news that there was an oil production outage in Kazakhstan, the IMF raising world economic growth to 3.3% in 2026, China GDP coming in higher for Q4 2025 and revised up for 2025 to 5.0%, the UDS dollar index falling by 0.8% in yesterday’s trading, very cold weather increasing heating oil demand and US sanctions against Russia and Iran kicking in. All these host of factors along with the “normal” seasonal influences are helping to push prices higher.
On the bearish side is President Trump wanting to impose a 10% tariff against Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden due to no deal in Greenland. The US has one military base in Greenland with 150 men so more security guarantees are needed against Russia.
The US seized a seventh tanker that was trying to run the US blockage on Venezuelan crude oil. The plan would be to move this crude to a location where it can be sold in a legitimate open market.