Data show Iran’s oil exports to China dropped significantly

The data from Kpler, covered in a Saturday report by the Fars news agency, showed that Iranian oil exports to China had reached an average of 1.31 million barrels per day (bpd) in November, down 0.524 million bpd from October and the lowest reported in four months.

Kpler, a data analytics firm headquarters in Brussels, blamed the fall on a shortage of feedstock at Iranian refineries, geopolitical tensions, and new US sanctions affecting Iran’s arrangements for transporting oil to Chinese customers.

It added that Iran’s floating oil supplies near Singapore and Malaysia had increased because of declining deliveries to China.

However, Fars said that a sudden fall of government in Syria had caused more Iranian oil shipments to be rerouted to China, giving the Chinese customers increased negotiating power on prices.

Iran has been supplying a bulk of its crude oil to private buyers in China in the past years to avoid US sanctions that restrict its deliveries to state buyers.

Iran’s oil exports to China reached record levels in recent months, a major sign that US sanctions had effectively failed to remove the Iranian supplies from the markets.

Importing more than 0.75 million bpd of oil from Iran, China was the largest official buyer of Iranian oil before 2018 when former US president and current president-elect Donald Trump withdrew from an international deal on Iran’s nuclear program and imposed sanctions on the country.