China's teapots are filling up

Chinese authorities are giving independent refiners greater freedom to source their own supplies of crude oil

Until recently, China's Hengli Petrochemical was a little-known manufacturer of chemical fibres. But in May, the group, based in the Port of Dalian in northern China, leapt into prominence when the commerce ministry gave it approval to import 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil, the biggest-ever quota for a privately-owned "teapot" refinery. Overnight, the decision made Hengli an important buyer of Saudi Arabian crude oil. The first shipment, reportedly 2m spot barrels of medium crude, was being loaded in June and fed into Hengli's new refinery for trial runs. Clearly, the quota is directly connected to the refinery, which has a capacity of 400,000 b/d and is designed to process Saudi medium