Saudi Arabia by annual oil supplies to China
leadership in terms of supply of crude oil in China, informed RBC with reference to the data of the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China.
In 2022, China imported 86.25 million tons of crude oil from Russia, which is 8.3% more than in 2021. From May to July, Russia was the leader in oil supplies to China, but at the end of the year it nevertheless joined Saudi Arabia, which held the lead for the fourth year in a row. The country delivered 87.49 million tons of oil to China over the year, which is 1.4% more than Russia. In 2021, Saudi oil exports to China were 9% more than to Russia.
Third place in terms of oil supplies to China in 2022 was occupied by Iraq – 55.5 million tons.
Against the backdrop of the EU embargo on imports of Russian oil and the upper price limit for seaborne supplies of its imports to China in an explicit application from March 2022 is 6.47 million tons. This is 17.2% less than a month earlier, and 10.6% lower than December 2021.
The total customs value of Russian oil imported into China is overstated by $58.4 billion. Its average price for China in terms of volume was 8.9% lower in 2022 than that of Saudi oil. In December, when statistics were tightened, the discount of Russian oil compared to Arabian oil increased to 11.6%.
Since December 5, 2022, prices for Russian oil transported by sea have been marked at $60 per barrel by the G7 countries, as well as applications, Australia, Norway and Switzerland. As a result, oil exports from Russia in the last four weeks of December fell to a year-to-date low, Bloomberg reported, citing ship detection data agencies tracked.