Iran’s Oil Exports to China Decline

Iran's crude oil exports to its largest buyer, China, declined last month due to stricter U.S. sanctions and refinery maintenance.

Per that data, Iran shipped a little over 1.1 million barrels of crude to China daily, which was 20% lower than export flows in May 2024, The Caspian Post reports citing foreign media.

Compared to April, the May figure is around 400,000 bpd lower. The data is not entirely certain, however, as tankers carrying Iranian crude abroad use a variety of moves to mask their origin and route.

Kpler recently reported that a growing number of tankers carrying Iranian oil to China were now switching off their tracking devices that conceal their location. “Ship-to-ship transfers have been used to mask the origin of those cargoes,” a Kpler analyst told Bloomberg last week. “Now they’re switching signals off for longer, so that it’s now even harder to trace those flows back to the source, which is Iran,” Muyu Xu also said.

Going forward, oil flows from Iran to China are likely to remain weaker than usual due to refinery maintenance, according to one Vortexa analyst, who said that “delayed seasonal refinery maintenance, […] is now expected to extend through July.” Chinese refiners also stocked up on cheap Iranian crude earlier in the year before Washington tightened the sanction noose, so their inventory levels should be quite comfortable for the time being.