Iran's Oil Exports to China Increase by 40%

China's Sinopec Corp. is importing around 90,000 barrels a day of a super light crude from Iran, 40 percent more than previously reported, Reuters reported on Friday. 

Sinopec is taking the South Pars condensate from the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) under a term deal that started in January, a main factor behind the rise in China's crude oil imports from Iran in the first half of the year, the report added. 

The volume is 40 percent larger than the annual supply of 24 million barrels reported earlier. 

China is one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude oil and its top energy company CNPC has deals to boost output at Iran's North Azadegan oil field and South Pars gas field. 

Iran, which sits on the world's second largest reserves of both oil and gas, is facing US sanctions over its civilian nuclear program. 

Iranian officials have dismissed US sanctions as inefficient, saying that they are finding Asian partners instead. Several Chinese and other Asian firms are negotiating or signing up to more and more oil and gas deals. 

Late in July, the Iranian foreign ministry underscored that Tehran is selling crude to China without any problem, dismissing media reports that the country is facing problems in getting paid by its biggest crude customer. 

"We have no problem in selling our oil to China," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast told reporters in a weekly press conference here in Tehran. 

"We see our oil cooperation with other countries in the framework of trade deals and economic cooperation," and our oil, banking and economic officials always do consultations to prevent any possible problem, Mehman-Parast added. 

In similar remarks, oil industry officials in China also dismissed western media allegations about possible problems in Tehran-Beijing oil deals, stressing that there were no pending debts between China and Iran. 

Iran is China's third-largest crude supplier, after Saudi Arabia and Angola, shipping around 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first six months of the year, or more than 10% of Beijing's 5.1 million bpd of imports.