China imported its first US crude oil cargo after about two months, since the two countries agreed to stop imposing new tariffs on each other’s products for 90 days. However, Chinese oil traders said they were still cautious.
The situation between US and China was heated when President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese products of $200 billion worth, in addition to the tariffs of $50 billion of products from China, which were already imposed. According to Reuters, Chinese customs data last recorded imports from the United States in September and a search in its database did not show any imports in October. Moreover, China was to be the leader importer of US crude oil in 2018 before banning the shipments as the trade was escalated.
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Namely, during the first seven months of 2018, China imported an average of 377,700 barrels of U.S. crude per day, as stated by the U.S. Energy Department figures, and surpassed Canada as the leader foreign buyer of US barrels. However, crude imports from the US decreased to the lowest in a timeframe of more than two years after Beijing threatened to impose tariffs in August.
As the White House stated, Beijing agreed on purchasing an amount of agricultural, energy, industrial and other products from the US.
What’s more, VLCC, Very Large Crude Carrier, as shown in data, discharged approximately 1 million barrels of Southern Green Canyon crude at Lanshan in Shandong on November.
In addition, Unipec had chartered the super tanker to ship American oil to China. New Courage first called at Cezi Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, where it offloaded on November about 260,000 barrels of Latin American crude.
Finally, Unipec and Royal Dutch Shell Plc aspire to book supertankers to load crude in the U.S. Gulf Coast in December for China. Yet, these vessels have the possibility to be diverted elsewhere in Asia.