In March and April, COVID-19 hit global economies hard and destroyed a third of the world's oil demand, which resulted in an oil glut and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that saw some of the lowest prices in over a decade.

China, arguably the world's second largest consumer of oil products, took quick action and ordered record volumes of crude from Saudi Arabia, to the tune of 8.88 million tonnes in June alone, or 2.16 million barrels per day. Data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs shows this was well above the 1.89 million barrels per day during the same period last year.

China and a few other Asian countries have relatively managed and contained the pandemic and are on a rebound, hence the need to restart their refineries and produce refined oil products in earnest.

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