In 2020, China’s crude oil imports will grow rapidly, and Saudi Arabia will continue to be the largest source of imports. Customs data show that in 2020, China’s crude oil imports were 542.386 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%; the import value was 1221.76 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 26.8%.

In 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic and OPEC production reduction, the international oil price will drop sharply. “China is the world’s largest crude oil importer, and low oil prices have led to an increase in crude oil imports.” Han Zhengji, an analyst with jinlianchuang crude oil, said that with the demand of China’s economic development, crude oil imports have maintained a steady growth. In 2020, the international crude oil futures continued to fall at the beginning of the year, and maintained a range shock trend after a slight rebound in the middle of the year. In the first quarter of 2020, the impact of the epidemic plus the OPEC + production crisis led to a continuous decline in crude oil prices. After the second quarter, international crude oil futures prices continued to decline, the weakest performance in nearly 30 years. In early May, OPEC +’s record production reduction of 9.7 million B / D was officially implemented, and the implementation of production reduction in various countries was good, and oil prices began to rebound. In the second half of the year, the news of the crude oil market was mixed, but the bad demand limited the upward space of oil price, and the oil price basically maintained the range fluctuation trend.

In the first half of 2020, the sharp drop of oil price will reduce the import cost, and the import volume of crude oil will reach record high again and again. In the second half of the year, the international oil price rebounded, and the storage pressure appeared after the arrival of crude oil, so the import volume of crude oil decreased.

In 2020, China’s crude oil imports increased year-on-year, but the import amount decreased year-on-year. This is mainly due to the drop in international oil prices, especially the sharp drop in international crude oil futures prices in the first half of the year, and the drop in spot prices, which has reduced the cost of crude oil import.

In 2020, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Brazil, Angola, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, the United States and Norway are the top ten source countries of China’s crude oil imports. Among them, Saudi Arabia’s crude oil import volume was about 84.92 million tons, about 1.69 million barrels / day, a year-on-year increase of 1.9%, surpassing Russia by a small margin.

In 2020, Russia will export about 83.57 million tons of crude oil to China, about 1.67 million barrels per day, up 7.6% year on year. “Compared with Saudi Arabia, Russia is more flexible in logistics and transportation, and has more advantages in geographical location. In 2020, Russia’s crude oil export growth will be higher than Saudi Arabia.” Han Zhengji said.

In 2020, Iraq will remain China’s third largest supplier of crude oil. Iraq has become one of the main beneficiaries of the severe US sanctions, which have seriously affected the oil exports of Iran and Venezuela, the crude oil producing countries. In 2020, Iraq’s oil exports to China increased by 16.1% year on year, reaching 60.12 million tons.

Han Zhengji predicted that in 2021, on the one hand, the market has experience in the prevention and control of the epidemic, and the demand for crude oil will not decline significantly; on the other hand, considering that the current crude oil price has rebounded from the low point, the cost of crude oil import will increase to a certain extent, and China’s crude oil import may maintain a steady growth trend.