America’s second-largest oil client, China, has completely halted all oil imports from the US as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies continue to grow.
TEHRAN
(OPEX) – Russia
Today reported on Saturday that America’s second-largest oil
client, China, has completely stopped buying crude from the United States as
trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies continue to grow.
While oil
has not been included on the list of bilateral tariffs, Chinese refiners have
been staying away from buying crude from the US.
“We are
one of the major carriers for crude oil from the US to China. Before [the trade
war] we had a nice business, but now it’s totally stopped,” Xie Chunlin,
the president of CMES, said on the sidelines of the Global Maritime Forum’s
Annual Summit in Hong Kong, as quoted by Reuters.
“It’s
unfortunately happened, the trade war between the US and China. Surely for the
shipping business, it’s not good,” the CMES president said.
He added
that the trade war was also forcing China to diversify its soybean supplies.
Beijing is now buying most of its soybeans from South America.
China’s
crude oil imports from America reached an average of 334,880 barrels per day
through August, making Beijing the second-largest buyer of US oil after Canada.
According
to RT, China may be the largest buyer of American crude since much of the
oil imported by Canada is re-exports – Canadian crude that briefly crosses into
the US on pipelines before re-entering Canada. After ending a 40-year ban on
oil exports in late 2015, the US has ramped up sales to two million barrels per
day (bpd).
China
buys most of its crude from Russia, with imports soaring from 665,000 bpd in
2014 to 1.2 million bpd last year. Beijing’s other major suppliers are Iran and
Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile,
China has announced that it will continue to buy crude from Iran and will
resist the new round of re-imposed sanctions by the United States.