- China’s oil imports hit record highs in 2025 at 11.55 million bpd.
- Rising oil prices and surging freight rates may now curb imports, even as China boosts discounted Russian purchases and benefits from price cuts on African and Saudi crude.
- Despite talk of weakening demand, China remains a key price-setter.
China’s imports last year broke yet another record, despite talk of waning oil demand. Since the start of this year, the world’s biggest oil importer has continued buying at elevated rates, but this may be about to change as prices extend their rally.
Brent crude has been hovering around $70 per barrel for over a week now, and the outlook remains rather bullish compared to forecasts from the end of 2025, which could not foresee the latest geopolitical developments and their potential implications for supply security. China, while not as sensitive to international oil prices as its neighbor India, is still sensitive to these prices. And it has built up a nice inventory of crude.
Those record imports in 2025 averaged 11.55 million barrels daily. That was a 4.4% increase on the previous year, yet not all of that oil was refined. In fact, a lot of it was stockpiled. From March 2025 onwards, “we started to see a very impressive rate of stockpiling, like close to one million barrels per day,” Frederic Lasserre, global head of research and analysis at commodity trading giant Gunvor, said last September.
Not only was China stockpiling crude at elevated rates, but it was making steps to expand its oil inventory by building new storage sites—a total of 11 of these, with a combined capacity of as much as 169 million barrels. Now, some observers speculated at the time that China was stocking up on oil as it prepares to take Taiwan, in anticipation of a reaction from the U.S. but since nothing has happened around Taiwan for the time being, this remains only speculation.
A rather more obvious explanation for China’s oil buying behavior comes from its track record as an importer: China buys more oil when it’s cheap and less when it becomes expensive. This is, in fact, the normal behavior of any importer of any commodity. China is simply the biggest one and, as such, attracts the most attention. Last year, oil was cheap. It was cheap because oil traders were so confident the oil glut was as huge as the IEA estimated, they paid no attention to geopolitics. This year, geopolitics has become a lot more difficult to ignore, and the IEA is revising its estimates. Oil has climbed higher, and Chinese buyers may be starting to feel it.
A recent report said that Chinese refiners and traders have been buying record amounts of Russian crude, with the average daily for February estimated at close to 2.1 million barrels daily, according to Kpler. That would be up from 1.7 million barrels daily in January and a result of Indian refiners’ pullback under U.S. pressure to stop buying Russian crude. Because of that pullback, Russian oil is fetching even deeper discounts than before, which is very welcome news for Chinese buyers.
But it is not only Russian crude that is getting discounted. Reuters’s Clyde Russell this week reported, citing traders, that Angolan and Nigerian sellers were also cutting their prices, with local crudes being sold at $5 discounts to Dated , up from $3 earlier in February. According to Russell, this is an early sign that Chinese oil imports may weaken from April onwards, not least because of higher freight rates, which are hitting demand for oil from Western Africa—and for Middle Eastern oil.
Kpler data suggests Chinese crude oil imports from Nigeria and Angola are set to decline to 1.04 million barrels daily in March, from 1.25 million barrels daily in the final quarter of last year. African oil imports are also set for another decline in April, to 978,000 barrels daily, the data shows.
Supertanker rates to ship crude on the key Middle East-to-China route have surged to a six-year high as Persian Gulf supply to India soars and traders rush shipments to precede a potential U.S. military campaign in Iran, industry data and sources told Reuters earlier this week. The daily rate for hiring a very large crude carrier capable of shipping 2 million barrels of crude jumped to as much as $170,000 on Tuesday, tripling since the beginning of 2026. As rates rise, Middle Eastern oil exporters are also reducing their prices.
Saudi Arabia has lowered its official selling price for Arab Light to the lowest since December 2020, Russell reported, citing Reuters data. This is the fourth monthly price reduction in a row for the Saudis. As a result, Arab Light for March delivery sells on par with the Dubai/Oman benchmark and, according to traders, Saudi oil exports to China next month could reach 56 to 57 million barrels in total. That would be up from 48 million barrels for February, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
The discounts, the moderating appetite of Chinese oil buyers, and analysts’ expectations for the next two months should serve as a reminder that, despite all the talk about waning oil demand in the world’s top importer, China remains a force to be reckoned with in price-setting for the world’s most traded commodity.
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