Petroleum consumption is rising around the world as the major economies exit from lockdowns imposed to control the coronavirus epidemic, but the uneven recovery presents challenges for fuel refiners. Refiners must cope with a much stronger rebound in demand for gasoline compared with diesel and jet fuel, reconfiguring their equipment to shift the yield towards light distillates and away from middle distillates. The epidemic and measures introduced to control it have reduced petroleum consumption in three ways, with varying implications for the scale and speed of the recovery in fuel use: First, the direct and ... (full story)