China

China in one paragraph of numbers

China produced 216.1 million tonnes of crude oil in 2025, imported 577.7 million tonnes, and ran 737.6 million tonnes through its larger refineries, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Converted at a round 7.3 barrels per tonne, that is roughly 4.3 million barrels a day of domestic output against 11.6 million barrels a day of imports, with refinery runs near 14.8 million barrels a day. Imports therefore supplied a little under three quarters of the crude available to the country. The rest of this page explains where those figures come from, how they changed between 2021 and 2026, and what they can and cannot show.

All of the volume figures below come from three kinds of NBS publication: the annual statistical communiqués on national economic and social development, the monthly "Energy Production" releases, and the year-end versions of those releases. Every figure was read from the NBS English-language site and checked in October 2026. The barrel conversions are ours, and the factor is stated wherever it is used.

The national ledger, 2021 to 2025

The annual communiqué carries crude output in its table of major energy products and crude imports in its table of main import commodities. Lining up five consecutive communiqués gives a consistent series.

Year	Crude output (million t)	Change	Crude imports (million t)	Change	Natural gas output (billion m³)
2021	198.9	+2.1%	513.0	-5.4%	207.6
2022	204.7	+2.9%	508.3	-0.9%	220.1
2023	209.0	+2.1%	564.0	+11.0%	232.4
2024	212.9	+1.8%	553.4	-1.9%	246.5
2025	216.1	+1.5%	577.7	+4.4%	262.1

Sources: NBS statistical communiqués for 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, checked October 2026. Values rounded to one decimal.

Two patterns stand out. Domestic output grew every year, but the growth rate slowed from 2.9% in 2022 to 1.5% in 2025, so the cumulative gain over four years was about 8.7%. The import line, by contrast, moved in steps: flat to lower in 2021 and 2022, a jump of 11.0% in 2023, a small fall in 2024 and a 4.4% rise in 2025. Imports are where the year-to-year variation sits, and they are about two and a half times the size of domestic output in every year shown.

From tonnes to barrels, and why the factor matters

Chinese statistics report oil in tonnes, while most market commentary uses barrels per day. The conversion depends on the density of the crude, which is why there is no single correct factor. A light crude yields more barrels per tonne than a heavy one. Our barrel of oil explainer works through the arithmetic from API gravity.

For a national aggregate that mixes many grades, analysts commonly use a factor around 7.3 barrels per tonne. Applying it to the NBS series gives the following approximate daily rates. Treat the second decimal as noise.

Year	Output (million b/d, est.)	Imports (million b/d, est.)	Imports as share of output plus imports
2021	3.98	10.26	72.1%
2022	4.09	10.17	71.3%
2023	4.18	11.28	73.0%
2024	4.26	11.07	72.2%
2025	4.32	11.55	72.8%

The share column does not depend on the conversion factor, because it is a ratio of two tonne figures. That is the most reliable way to state China's dependence on foreign crude from official data: between 71% and 73% of the crude that entered the country's supply in each of the last five years came from abroad. The share has barely moved, which means domestic output and imports grew at broadly similar rates over the period: rising output has not displaced imports.

A worked example shows how sensitive the barrel figures are. If the true average density of China's imported crude were equivalent to 7.2 barrels per tonne instead of 7.3, the 2025 import estimate would fall from 11.55 to about 11.40 million barrels a day, a difference of roughly 160,000 barrels a day, larger than the entire year-on-year change in domestic output. When two sources quote China's imports in barrels and disagree by that order of magnitude, the factor is the first thing to check.

Refinery runs, and the gap between supply and processing

The monthly NBS energy release reports "crude oil processing" by industrial enterprises above designated size. The December releases carry the full-year totals.

• 2024: 708.43 million tonnes, down 1.6% from 2023 (NBS, Energy Production in December 2024, checked October 2026).
• 2025: 737.59 million tonnes, up 4.1% (NBS, Energy Production in December 2025, checked October 2026). December alone was 62.46 million tonnes, up 5.0%.

At 7.3 barrels per tonne, 2025 processing works out to about 14.75 million barrels a day and 2024 to about 14.2 million.

Now compare processing with the crude that became available. In 2025, output plus imports came to about 793.8 million tonnes, while processing was 737.6 million. The difference, about 56 million tonnes or roughly 1.1 million barrels a day at our factor, also appeared in 2024 at a similar size (about 58 million tonnes). The NBS releases do not say where that crude went. Several explanations fit the published definitions, and the data cannot rank them:

1. Coverage. Processing counts only enterprises above the designated size threshold, so smaller plants are outside the figure.
2. Stock changes. Crude bought and stored, in commercial or state tanks, is supply that is not processed in the same year. China does not publish a weekly inventory survey comparable to the EIA report described in our guide to the EIA weekly petroleum status report.
3. Exports and other uses. Small volumes of crude are re-exported or used directly rather than refined.

The practical lesson is that "implied demand" built from output plus imports minus runs is not a measured quantity for China. It is a residual that absorbs every gap in coverage.

2026: domestic output up, refinery runs down

The latest NBS monthly release changes the picture for 2026. For January to September 2026, the NBS reports (Energy Production in September 2026, checked October 2026):

Indicator	September 2026	Change from a year earlier	January to September 2026	Change
Crude oil output	18.21 million t	+2.2%	164.60 million t	+1.0%
Crude processing	57.48 million t	-8.4%	513.60 million t	-6.8%
Natural gas output	21.0 billion m³	-1.0%	196.7 billion m³	+0.9%

September processing averaged 1.916 million tonnes a day, about 14.0 million barrels a day at our factor, against the 2025 full-year average near 14.75 million. A fall of 6.8% in nine-month runs, after a record 2025, is the largest shift in any line on this page. The NBS release gives the numbers but not the causes. The year coincided with the disruption to Gulf shipping that the EIA has tracked in its 2026 outlooks, which is discussed on our OPEC+ explainer and our page on global supply chokepoints; readers should treat any link between the two as a hypothesis until import data by source confirm it.

Domestic output kept growing, slowly. Natural gas output, which had risen more than 6% a year from 2023 to 2025, was almost flat in the first nine months of 2026.

Natural gas: the faster-growing half of domestic supply

For most of the period on this page, China's gas output grew far faster than its oil output. Between 2021 and 2025 the communiqué figures went from 207.6 to 262.1 billion cubic metres, a rise of about 26%, against about 9% for crude. The December 2025 release put full-year gas output at 261.9 billion cubic metres, up 6.2%, a fraction lower than the communiqué's 262.1; the communiqué is the later and final figure.

That difference in growth rates matters for anyone reading the page as an oil story. Upstream investment in China has delivered more incremental gas than incremental oil, which is consistent with a policy emphasis on gas as a cleaner fuel for power and industry. It also means "domestic energy production" headlines can rise briskly while crude import dependence stays where it was.

The energy mix around oil

Oil demand in China sits inside a much larger energy system, and the communiqués report its size each year.

Measure	2024	2025
Total energy consumption	5.96 billion t of standard coal equivalent, +4.3%	6.17 billion t of standard coal equivalent, +3.5%
Coal share of total energy consumption	53.2%	51.4%
Clean energy share (gas, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar)	not restated here	30.4%, up 1.8 points
New energy vehicle output	13.17 million, +38.7%	16.52 million, +25.1%

Sources: NBS communiqués for 2024 and 2025, checked October 2026.

Two cautions apply. First, the new energy vehicle line is production, not domestic sales, and it includes vehicles built for export, so it is a measure of industrial output rather than of fuel displaced at home. Second, oil's own share of energy consumption is not printed in the communiqué text quoted here, so this page does not state it. What the table does support is the direction: total energy use is still growing, coal's share is falling slowly, and the vehicle industry is producing electric and plug-in models at a scale that will weigh on gasoline demand over time.

Who produces, and what the national data leave out

China's upstream sector is dominated by three state-controlled groups: China National Petroleum Corporation (whose listed arm is PetroChina), China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). The NBS publishes national totals only. It does not break output down by company, basin or field in the releases used here, so field-level claims about specific basins require company reports, which this page has not re-verified in this review. Earlier versions of this page carried field-level statements and project targets that could not be traced to a primary source; they have been removed rather than repeated.

For readers comparing China with other producers, the world oil production map shows national output side by side, and the consumption map shows why China's position as a consumer, not a producer, is what moves global balances.

Five ways the China numbers get misread

1. Mixing tonnes and barrels without saying so. A figure of "4.3" can be million barrels a day or a misread of 43 million tonnes in a quarter. Always check the unit and the period.
2. Treating processing as consumption. Refinery runs measure crude converted into products, some of which are exported. Product exports and stock changes sit between runs and end use.
3. Comparing preliminary and final figures. The December release and the communiqué can differ slightly, as gas output did in 2025 (261.9 against 262.1 billion cubic metres). Use the communiqué for annual totals.
4. Forgetting the coverage threshold. Monthly output and processing figures cover enterprises above the designated size, which is why they can differ from totals reported elsewhere.
5. Reading one month as a trend. September 2026 processing fell 8.4% from a year earlier, but single months in China are affected by refinery maintenance schedules and holiday timing. The nine-month figure (down 6.8%) is the safer statement.

A worked example: what a 1% change means in barrels

Suppose a headline reports that China's crude output rose 1% in a year. Using the 2025 base of 216.1 million tonnes:

• 1% of 216.1 million tonnes is about 2.16 million tonnes.
• At 7.3 barrels per tonne, that is about 15.8 million barrels over the year.
• Divided by 365 days, it is roughly 43,000 barrels a day.

Now apply the same 1% to imports of 577.7 million tonnes: about 5.8 million tonnes, or roughly 116,000 barrels a day. A one-point change in China's import growth is worth almost three times a one-point change in its output growth. That asymmetry is why analysts focus on the customs and refinery-run data rather than on domestic production when they assess China's effect on world prices.

2024 was the last soft year, and it looked different

The 2026 decline in refinery runs is not the first dip in the series. In 2024 processing fell 1.6%, to 708.4 million tonnes, and crude imports fell 1.9%, to 553.4 million tonnes. What makes 2024 a useful comparison is what did not happen: domestic output still rose 1.8%, and the import share of supply stayed at about 72%. Runs and imports moved down together, by similar small percentages, which is what a mild demand slowdown looks like in these statistics.

The 2026 figures so far have a different shape. Runs are down 6.8% over nine months, several times the 2024 decline, while domestic output is still rising. If imports turn out to have fallen by much less than runs, the difference will have gone into storage; if they fell by more, refiners will have drawn on stocks. The 2026 communiqué, due in early 2027, will settle the annual import figure. Until then the honest statement is that the run decline is large and the import side is not yet confirmed from the NBS annual table.

How to follow China's oil data month by month

The NBS publishes on a fixed calendar, and a short routine covers most of what matters:

1. The energy production release, around the 18th to 20th of the following month. It gives crude output, crude processing and gas output for the previous month, with year-on-year changes and daily averages. Compare the processing change with the output change first.
2. Check the cumulative line, not only the month. The January-to-date figures smooth out maintenance and holiday effects that distort single months.
3. Convert once, with a stated factor. Pick a barrels-per-tonne factor, write it down, and use the same one for every comparison so that changes are comparable even if levels are approximate.
4. Hold the annual communiqué as the reference. When it appears at the end of February, replace the year's monthly sums with its figures, which are the ones this page uses for 2021 to 2025.
5. Put China in the global balance. Each monthly agency outlook carries its own assumptions for Chinese demand, and they do not always agree. Our guides to the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook and OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report show where each agency prints its China assumptions.

India, the other large Asian importer, reports in a different format through its petroleum ministry; the India country page covers those series separately.

What would change this picture

• Refinery runs recovering to 2025 levels would show up first in the monthly NBS processing line, and would be the clearest sign that the 2026 decline was temporary.
• A sustained move in the import share away from the 71% to 73% band would signal a structural change, either faster domestic growth or slower demand.
• Gas output growth resuming above 5% would confirm that the 2026 slowdown was a pause rather than a plateau.

None of these is a forecast. They are the specific lines to watch, and each is published by the NBS on a monthly schedule listed on its release calendar.

Frequently asked questions

How much crude oil does China produce?

The NBS reported 216.1 million tonnes for 2025, up 1.5% from 2024. At a conventional 7.3 barrels per tonne, that is roughly 4.3 million barrels a day. Output in January to September 2026 was 164.6 million tonnes, up 1.0% from a year earlier.

How dependent is China on imported crude?

On official tonne figures, imports were 577.7 million tonnes in 2025 against domestic output of 216.1 million, so imports made up about 72.8% of the two combined. That share has stayed between about 71% and 73% every year from 2021 to 2025.

Why do China's import figures differ between sources?

Mostly because of conversion and timing. Chinese customs and NBS data are in tonnes, and turning them into barrels requires an assumed density. A difference of 0.1 barrels per tonne moves the 2025 import estimate by about 160,000 barrels a day. Monthly figures are also revised and can be reported on a customs-clearance rather than an arrival basis.

Did China's refinery runs fall in 2026?

Yes. The NBS reported crude processing of 513.6 million tonnes for January to September 2026, down 6.8% from the same period of 2025, after a record 737.6 million tonnes in full-year 2025. September alone was down 8.4%.

Is China's oil demand falling because of electric vehicles?

The national statistics used here do not measure oil demand directly. They show strong growth in new energy vehicle production (16.5 million units in 2025) and a 2026 fall in refinery runs, but production includes exports and runs are affected by many factors. A direct answer needs product consumption data, which this page does not cover.

Sources

• National Bureau of Statistics of China, statistical communiqués on national economic and social development for 2021 to 2025, and monthly "Energy Production" releases for December 2024, December 2025 and September 2026, all at stats.gov.cn, checked October 2026.
• Barrel-per-tonne conversions and the shares derived from them are PetroEyes calculations from the NBS figures, at the factor stated in the text.