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  Reuters reported the  following  news on 17 Feb 2023: China's oil refining capacity overtook the United States as the world's largest in 2022 , an industry official said on Thursday, though its production of fuel products lagged the United States due to low utilisation rates. Total refining capacity in China expanded to 920 million tonnes per year, or 18.4 million barrels per day (bpd), in 2022 Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, told reporters. That compares with U.S. refining capacity as of December at 17.6 million bpd, according to the International Energy Agency's latest oil market report. China's total refined products output last year was less than 700 million tonnes (5.1 billion barrels), at an average plant utilisation rate of around 70%, the association said, compared with more than 800 million tonnes in the United States, where average utilisation exceeded 90%. China has 32 refineries with at least 200,000 ...

Surge in Oil prices Oil sits at the start of inflation as the energy resources go into every part of the market. Fuel costs cascades down into the energy, utilities, supply chain and then into products & services.  For businesses that can pass additional costs to customers, they will pass the costs increase to the customers.   Let us look at oil for a start and how this commodity can create an inflationary impact whenever the crude oil price surges: Oil price increase > fuel price increase > utilities cost increase > supply chain costs increase > goods and services price increase.  (This leads to inflation as costs go up.)  We need to understand that the challenge in the USA is not really due to the oil supplies but rather the bottleneck in the refinery capacity. US petroleum consumption will reach 20.51 million bpd (barrels per day) in 2022 US refinery capacity is short by 1 million barrels per day as per EIA chart above To meet the s...