Chinese refinery throughput reached a new high in November, growing 9.1 percent from a year earlier as companies started new refining units and demand started to recover modestly along with the economy.

Plants processed 41.61 million tonnes, or 10.125 million barrels per day (bpd), of crude oil last month, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics on Sunday.

That compared with 9.4 million bpd in October, which was just a touch below September's record at 9.43 million bpd.

Fuel demand in China, the driver of global oil demand growth in the past decade, has been sluggish for most of this year. The International Energy Agency last forecast China's oil demand to grow 2.8 percent this year, the lowest growth since 2001.

But fuel consumption may be ticking up since October as the world's second-largest economy showed more signs of recovering.

Refiners brought on line two new crude units totalling 240,000 bpd in October, one at independent plant Dongming in eastern Shandong province and a second in the northeast Daqing refinery operated by PetroChina.

For the first 11 months, China's refinery throughput gained 3.2 percent on the year at 424.61 million tonnes, or about 9.25 million bpd.