Fresh analysis has revealed that China has increased their number of crude oil imports from Russia in May according to their customs data which has also helped to offset some of the losses from Western nations while trying to scale back Russian energy purchases over the invasion of Ukraine.
This recent spike in the oil trade between the two nations has also shown that Russia will be overtaking Saudi Arabia to become China’s top oil provider as the West places stringent actions on most of Moscow’s energy exports.
The world’s second-biggest economy imported around 8.42 million tonnes of oil from Russia last month — a 55 percent rise on-year.\
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Beijing has refused to publicly condemn Moscow’s war and has instead exacted economic gains from its isolated neighbour. It imported 7.82 million tonnes of oil from Saudi Arabia in May.
China bought $7.47 billion worth of Russian energy products last month, about $1 billion more than in April, according to Bloomberg News.
The new customs data comes four months into the war in Ukraine, with buyers from the United States and Europe shunning Russian energy imports or pledging to slash them over the coming months.
Asian demand is helping to staunch some of those losses for Russia, especially buyers from China and India. India had reportedly bought six times more Russian oil from March to May compared with the same period last year, while imports by China during that period trippled, data from research firm Rystad Energy shows.
“For now, it is just pure economics that Indian and Chinese refiners are importing more Russian-origin crude oil… as such oil is cheap,” said analyst Wei Cheong Ho.
According to the International Energy Agency’s latest global oil report, India has overtaken Germany in the last two months as the second-largest importer of Russian crude.
