Tanker Sailings to China Down by Double Digits

Tanker Sailings to China Down by Double Digits

in International Shipping News 07/03/2020

With China’s oil demand being the main concern for the tanker market these days, it’s worth taking a look at how one of the biggest markets for the tanker industry, shaped demand during 2019, but also during the first couple of months of 2020. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Banchero Costa noted that “the COVID-19 crisis has been gripping China already for almost two months now. It’s having a huge negative impact on the economy, and this is starting to show also in the trade figures. In the first 2 months of 2020, China imported 76.8 mln tonnes of crude oil by sea, according to vessel tracking data from Refinitiv. This represents an increase of +3.4% y-o-y, compared to the 74.2 mln tonnes imported in the same two-month period of 2019. On a single-month basis, January showed a +2.5% year-on-year increase to 41.4 mln tonnes, whilst February showed a +4.6% increase year-on-year to 35.4 mln tonnes”.

Source: Banchero Costa

“However, single month comparisons are misleading due to the shifting date of the Chinese New Year (which were in February last year but in January this year) – hence it makes more sense to look at the two months combined. Whilst the data still shows positive growth in imports of +3.4% in the first two months of this year, this is a significant slowdown from the +18.6% growth seen in the same period last year, and also from the +5.2% y-o-y growth posted in 2018. We now expect even more disappointing figures in March”, said the shipbroker.

According to Banchero Costa, “during February 2020, sailings from the Arabian Gulf towards China were down almost by 10% year-on-year. Looking back at last year, China’s total seaborne imports of crude oil reached 447.6 mln tonnes in the 12 months of 2019, according to vessel tracking data from Refinitiv. This represents an increase of +9.8% year-on-year, compared to the 407.7 mln tonnes imported in the whole of 2018. Last year, 47 percent of all crude shipments to China were sourced from the Arabian Gulf. Imports from Saudi Arabia increased by +47.5% year-on-year in 2019 to 77.9 mln tonnes. Saudi Arabia by itself accounts for 17% of all crude importsto China last year”.

Meanwhile, “shipments from Iraq to China increased by +20.7% year-on-year in 2019 to 49.8 mln tonnes. Iraq accounts for 11% of China’s crude import volumes. Imports from Kuwait decreased by -4.4% y-o-y to 21.9 mln tonnes, however shipments from the UAE increased by +9.8% to 13.5 y-o-y. The biggest fall, of course, was from Iran ; volumes went down by -53.5% y-o-y to just 15.1 mln tonnes, down from 32.6 mln tonnes in 2018. Imports from Venezuela fell by -23.5% y-o-y in 2019 to just 10.4 mln tonnes. This however was more than compensated by a +39.9% increase in shipments from Brazil to 34.9 mln tonnes. Shipments from West Africa to China increased by +6.2% in 2019 to 74.2 mln tonnes. West Africa accounted for 17% of all crude importsto China last year. The largest African exporter was Angola, with 44.7 mln tonnes, +0.9% y-o-y. Exports from Gabon almost doubled in 2019 to 6.9 mln tonnes, from 3.6 mln tonnes in 2018. Volumes from the Republic of Congo went down -12.0% to 11.7 mln tonnes, but from Nigeria almost trebled to 2.1 mln tonnes”, said Banchero Costa.

Source: Banchero Costa

The shipbroker concluded that “seaborne exports from Russia to China increased by +14.8 year-onyear to 29.4 mln tonnes. Naturally, the vast majority, 23.5 mln tonnes, came from Kozmino in Far East Russia, and 1.8 mln tonnes from Sakhalin. However, 2.9 mln tonnes were shipped all the way from Novorossiysk, and 0.6 mln tonnes from Primorsk! Volumes from the USA, unsurprisingly, crashed by -56.5% y-o-y to just 5.3 mln tonnes in 2019”.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide