China's crude oil imports from Iran rose 4.7% month on month to 218,982 b/d in July, while the US ranked as the eighth-largest crude supplier as shipments surged to a 13-month high of 362,364 b/d, data made available Tuesday by China's General Administration of Customs showed.
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In metric-ton basis, Iranian inflows rose 8.2% to 926,119 mt from June, but dropped 71.9% year on year.
The month-on-month increase was recorded despite the fact that waivers to US sanctions on Iranian oil ended May 2.
Meanwhile, crude oil imports from the US jumped 45% year on year to 1.53 million mt. This was the first time since August 2018 for the supplier to be in the top 10 list.
Supply from Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, surged 115.9% year on year to 6.99 million mt, or 1.65 million b/d, in July, despite falling from the all-time high of 1.89 million b/d in June.
As a result, the kingdom became the top crude supplier to China in both July and the first seven months of the year.
During January-July, China imported 162.27 million mt of crude from OPEC, up 10.4% year on year.
Supplies from the Middle East and South America also gained 9% and 11.3% year on year during January-July, respectively.
However, volumes from North America plunged 59.8% year on year to 4.2 million mt in the first seven months due to lesser US crude inflows earlier this year.
-- Oceana Zhou, oceana.zhou@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Manish Parashar, manishparashar@spglobal.com