GUANGZHOU -China's commercial crude inventories at the end of October dropped by 3.46% from a month ago, because the country's crude throughput hit the year's second high in October, official data showed.

In October, China's crude output set a new high and imports stayed at a high level of 23.33m tonnes, according to the data.

If national strategic petroleum reserves were taken into account, China's crude inventories are equivalent to about 66 days of net imports or 37 days of consumption, according to ICIS C1 data.

In addition to commercial crude inventories, major Chinese oil refiners' crude inventories comprise stocks at subsidiary refineries and in pipelines.