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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChina Is Set to Eclipse America as World's Biggest Oil Refiner
(Bloomberg) -- Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell Plc pulled the plug on its Convent refinery in Louisiana. Unlike many oil refineries shut in recent years, Convent was far from obsolete: its fairly big by U.S. standards and sophisticated enough to turn a wide range of crude oils into high-value fuels. Yet Shell, the worlds third-biggest oil major, wanted to radically reduce refining capacity and couldnt find a buyer.
As Convents 700 workers found out they were out of a job, their counterparts on the other side of Pacific were firing up a new unit at Rongsheng Petrochemicals giant Zhejiang complex in northeast China. Its just one of at least four projects underway in the country, totaling 1.2 million barrels a day of crude-processing capacity, equivalent to the U.K.s entire fleet.
The Covid crisis has hastened a seismic shift in the global refining industry as demand for plastics and fuels grows in China and the rest of Asia, where economies are quickly rebounding from the pandemic. In contrast, refineries in the U.S and Europe are grappling with a deeper economic crisis while the transition away from fossil fuels dims the long-term outlook for oil demand.
America has been top of the refining pack since the start of the oil age in the mid-nineteenth century, but China will dethrone the U.S. as early as next year, according to the International Energy Agency. In 1967, the year Convent opened, the U.S. had 35 times the refining capacity of China.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-is-set-to-eclipse-america-as-world-s-biggest-oil-refiner/ar-BB1beSt3?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=DELLDHP
Timewas
(2,193 posts)The US ceded all leadership in almost every category
gladium et scutum
(806 posts)promote more drilling, more fracking, more refineries, All to remain the largest producer of fossil fuels? Just so that we don't cede leadership in this category.?
Timewas
(2,193 posts)I doubt that will happen that particular category is better gone
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,841 posts)Klaralven
(7,510 posts)Once their living standard rises to match ours, they should use about 4 times as much oil as the US.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/
DBoon
(22,354 posts)China overwhelms the US in total solar generation
Per capita generation - Australia and many EU countries greatly exceed the USA
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)big population. I made many friends there and they accomplish pretty much anything that
they want to. Just a heads up: they'll make better friends than enemies!