China to lean on Russian oil as Iran crisis chokes supply

The crisis in the Middle East is set to push China closer to Russia, analysts warned, as Beijing confronts the potential loss of cheap Iranian oil supplies and long-term disruption to energy markets.

China is the world’s largest oil and gas importer and relies on Iran for 13 per cent of its crude oil imports. In all, one-third of China’s oil and 25 per cent of its gas imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, through which shipment has been all but halted since US-Israeli strikes on Iran plunged the region into crisis.

As conflict spills across the Middle East, Beijing is facing an unprecedented test of its years-long effort to shore up economic security and harden itself against energy supply shocks.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government would probably first look to forge closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, experts and industry insiders said, despite Beijing’s misgivings about over-reliance on its northern neighbour. Russia is already China’s largest source of crude, accounting for 20 per cent of imports.

“Deepening energy ties with Russia will be one of the big takeaways of this — both crude and gas,” said Neil Beveridge, who leads Bernstein’s China energy research in Hong Kong.

“If Iran turns into a more pro-western state, or they thought it was going to be unstable for a long time, it will push the alliance between Russia and China even closer,” he added.

China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday slammed the US-Israeli strikes, urging “all parties to immediately cease military operations, avoid escalating tensions and safeguard the safety of the Strait of Hormuz”.

It added: “China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own energy security.”

China has for years purchased vast amounts of Iranian crude, a relationship that helped keep Tehran afloat and supplied independent Chinese refineries, known as teapots, with discounted product often relabelled “Malaysian blended oil” to avoid US sanctions.

The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran was “much more important” for Chinese energy than the US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January, said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis. Venezuela only accounted for about 4 per cent of China’s seaborne crude imports.

She added that Putin might push Beijing to pay higher prices for Russian oil and gas. “China is in a weaker position now.”

Some efforts are already under way. An oil trader at a state-owned group in the eastern Chinese port of Ningbo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said China’s oil majors had been increasing Russian shipments in recent weeks. The trader also pointed to plans by state oil group CNPC to restart a mothballed oil refinery unit in Dalian, north-eastern China, which would bolster capacity to handle further Russian imports.

In the longer term, the trader pointed to the emergence of Arctic trading routes as polar ice melts, which would open up faster and cheaper shipping lanes for oil via Europe and lift volumes from Russia.

Analysts said Beijing would also consider accelerating plans to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which would supply natural gas from north-west Russia through Mongolia and into China. The multibillion-dollar pipeline had been expected to be built by the early 2030s.

More immediately, Xi’s administration would consider the use of oil reserves, analysts said, as the Brent international oil benchmark surged as much as 17 per cent this week to nearly $85 a barrel.

The size of China’s oil reserves, which include the official Strategic Petroleum Reserve and commercial stockpiles, is shrouded in secrecy but is estimated to be between 1.1bn and 1.4bn barrels of oil.

That would potentially cover up to about 140 days of domestic oil import demand and is nearly double the level of a decade ago, after Beijing ordered that the stockpile be increased sharply over the past year.

Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said that while it might take months of disruption to threaten oil supply, the economic impact from higher oil prices would be “immediate”.

“Is it five days of oil at $100 [a barrel] or a month at $90? China has the ability to cushion that. The big question is SPR — do they start to use it as a way to mitigate the price implications?”

Analysts said that given uncertainty over the timing of Middle East deliveries, some Chinese refineries would slow operating rates.

Ye Lin, an Asia oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, said Beijing could take comfort in corporates and state-owned companies’ significant supplies as well as near-record shipments from Russia and Iran currently en route.

But she added that Beijing would be scoping out ways to dilute its reliance on imports from the Middle East. “China needs to prepare more,” she said.

Natixis’s García-Herrero said Beijing was now exploring all potential avenues for diversification.

For China, the Iran war underscores the importance of a decades-long drive to achieve energy self-sufficiency via the electrification of its transport and manufacturing base.

Cui Jingbo, co-director of the Environmental Research Center at Duke Kunshan University near Shanghai, said this policy had already fuelled a boom in solar and wind energy, battery storage and electric vehicles.

Now, focus was turning to using China’s abundant and low-cost renewable energy and biofuels to decarbonise its vast industrial sector.

“This has been a strategy at a national level,” he said. “The government has predicted there is going to be a regional conflict [in the Middle East].”

Additional contributions from Cheng Leng in Beijing. Data visualisation by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong