Tonight's 20:01 snapshot put Brent at $104.76 and WTI at $92.309, each up more than 4.5% on the day. For Chinese independents this is not a simple input-cost story — naphtha, fuel oil and bitumen assessments all moved up with crude, and the crack spread (product minus feedstock) actually widened in the move.

Fuel oil settled at 5,179 yuan/tonne, up 18.35, and bitumen at 5,557 yuan/tonne, up 9.15. Along the crude-to-heavy-barrel chain, coker feed and residue export prices were revised higher, lifting the book profit on a tonne of processed feedstock by roughly 60–90 yuan versus last week. The move is small but points the right way.

What caps the gain is the currency. USD/CNY printed 6.7035, 75 pips weaker than the prior day. On dollar-priced import crude, the exchange-rate line inside the landed duty-paid cost quietly eats a slice of any oil-price relief; with oil up today, the refinery edge comes from crack expansion rather than cheaper feedstock.

The operational read is straightforward: hedge a portion of fuel-oil and bitumen sales short-term to bank the crack, but do not bet on a one-way crude move, because the yuan leg rewrites the landed math at any moment. SNSUC's seven-product swap book tracks the $12.45 Brent–WTI spread, which sits on a different chain.