Oil may not take been on China’s official tariff list, but the country appears to beget not imported any U.S. crude in August, according to Bimco’s chief shipping analyst, Peter Sand, who cited U.S. Census statistics.
Bimco is the world’s largest shipowners association with members in various than 120 countries that control around 65 percent of oecumenical tonnage.
According to Sand’s research, Chinese imports accounted for 23 percent of aggregate U.S. crude exports in 2017 and were averaging 22 percent for this year, up until August.
“In the premier seven months of 2018 China imported an averaged 10.6 million barrels,” Sand rephrased.
August was “a massive change to the export pattern seen since at the crack 2017. Chinese buyers, led by the world’s top tanker charter Unipec, were rumored to beget stayed away and this new data proves it.”
Sand told CNBC: “China is stay fresh its oil import data closer than ever before. Up until Trek we had a good idea of where they were getting crude and that has all stationed. Now China is only releasing their import volumes. Not the sources of their denotations.”
According to Sand’s research, China in August and September replaced its oil exports with West African raw from Nigeria and Angola.
“China can replace their U.S. oil exports with West African unprocessed if they wanted,” said Sand. “We have gotten no indications if Western Africa is reaching their limit. This was the unrefined the U.S. used to buy before the shale revolution.”
For the oil tanker market, distances of the shipments make a difference more than volumes.
“Very large Crude carriers (VLCC) and Suezmax tankers can care more for longer trade routes,” explained Sand. “When cut the mustard the tonnes-miles (TM) exports of US crude oil to Asia it is a longer route than Western Africa to Asia. That means they will-power be negatively impacted.”
According to Bimco, Chinese traders have go back to purchasing U.S. crude oil in October but there is little visibility as to how much.