China’s importers hide crude oil shipments via ship-to-ship transfers as global sanctions and trade war exert their impact

Chinese oil imports from ship-to-ship transfers surged last month as flows from some traditional suppliers were crimped by the White House’s aggressive trade and foreign policies.

Some 910,000 tonnes of crude, three times as much as in August, was offloaded at Chinese ports after being transferred in the South China Sea, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s unclear where this oil came from, but moving crude from one vessel to another at sea is a common way of disguising the origin of cargoes.

“I think its highly likely that these ship-to-ship and Malaysian volumes are Iranian or Venezuelan crude,” said Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “But of course the whole point here is to make it hard to be sure.”

Imports from Malaysia rose to 1.385 million tonnes last month, making it the seventh-biggest supplier to China, up from 16th in August. Much of that oil has also been transferred at sea in the Malacca Strait, a common location for exchanging cargoes. Malaysian domestic production is limited, so it’s likely the increased volumes are coming from other countries and being blended in the Southeast Asian nation, said Liu Yuntao, an analyst at Energy Aspects.