China’s August Crude Oil Output Rises 0.8% to 18.43M Tonnes, Refining Down 6.9%

The divergence is the story: upstream crude keeps grinding out marginal gains while refining contracts sharply, meaning the barrel is being produced but not processed domestically at the same rate. The narrowing of the refining decline versus July suggests the downstream pullback may be past its worst, though the year-to-date figure still points to sustained weak runs. For RWA and commodity-market watchers, the open question is whether that crude is moving into storage or exports, and whether refining throughput keeps converging toward output in the months ahead.