Shipments into Rizhao and Dalian are significantly higher
month on month, said Muyu Xu, an analyst with Kpler
“Chinese teapots see refining margins slightly improving,
they now have stronger motivation to ramp up production and therefore need more
feedstock,” she said.
Flows into Lanqiao/Rizhao and Dalian almost doubled compared
to the previous month to 342,000 bpd and 132,000 bpd, respectively.
Oil from Iran has become the cheapest option for Chinese
buyers, even more than Russia and more independent refiners are seeking barrels
from the OPEC producer to boost their margins, said traders who participate in
the market.
Iranian Light was last offered at a discount of US$6.0 a
barrel to ICE Brent, they added, compared with a discount of less than a dollar
for comparable crude from Russia.
Importers registered in China’s Shandong province were the
biggest buyers of Iranian crude - masking as Malaysian - accounting for over
70% of the volume, according to customs data. Overall, eight Chinese regions
including Liaoning and Henan took oil from the Southeast Asian nation, the most
since October 2023.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Iran has also been
expanding its oil destination markets as the country is pushing to send more
oil to the global markets in an attempt to neutralize Western sanctions.
Iran
has sent shipments of crude oil to new destinations such as Bangladesh and
Oman, according to shipping sources and data cited by Reuters.
Oil sales are Iran's major revenue source and the country
has been looking for ways to sidestep US sanctions on its crude exports that
former president Donald Trump re-imposed in 2018 over Tehran's nuclear program.
Iran,
which is exempt from output quotas set by the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), is striving to maximize production and exports.
Former Oil Minister Javad Oji said in July that Iran was
selling crude oil to 17 countries, including those in Europe, according to Mehr
News Agency.
In one
new trade, the Golden Eagle tanker sailed near the port of Chittagong in
Bangladesh earlier this year after receiving oil from another vessel that
loaded it from Iran’s Kharg Island according to available evidence based on
shipping data, Claire Jungman, from US advocacy group United Against Nuclear
Iran, told Reuters.
The Golden Eagle offloaded parts of the cargo to smaller
tankers in ship-to-ship transfer operations around Chittagong in April, said
Jungman, whose organization tracks Iran-related tanker traffic via satellite
data.
The shipment to Bangladesh was separately confirmed by
another oil export tracking source.
An official with state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum
Corporation, which operates the country's main refinery, said it did not buy
the cargo and it was difficult to establish who the buyer was.
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