In a survey conducted by the Bloomberg News agency (of five trading companies and oil refiners), the results have shown that China may only import around 17 million metric tonnes of fuel oil this year. This figure represents a two million ton decrease on last year's quota.

An important indicator of fuel oil demand in the country is the number of import permits that the China government issues at the start of the year. As the Bloomberg report showed, the number of permits demand has only just increased marginally after a long, slow spell.

The fall of imports has also been attributed to PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) boosting their own processed fuels and, thus, increases the country's fuel oil output.

PetroChina's 297.1 mmbo output (over the space of six months) is an increase of 6.1% from its previous year's output, whilst Sinopec (also in the same time frame) benefited from a 6.9% increase to around 2.21 mmbo.

Another factor has been that despite the fact that fuel oil is used to power the country's power plants, some of these plants can make use of coal as an alternative fuel source should oil become unavailable.

"Whenever the fuel oil price shoots up, [China] switch[s]" to coal," Bloomberg reported fuel consultant Ong Eng Tong as saying.