China has increased crude oil imports from Russia by 15% to 3.368 million tons in January from a year ago, the General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China said.
But at the same time, Chinese oil imports from Russia fell 30% in January from record 4.811 million tons in December 2015.
Providing 4.23 million tons of crude oil, Saudi Arabia was the largest supplier to China in January. However, that was down 2% from January 2015 and 5.3% below December’s imports.
The third biggest crude exporter to China was Angola with its shipments of 3.03 million tons. Still, Angola’s exports declined by 7.5% on a yearly basis. In December it supplied 3.337 million tons of oil to China.
China also reduced oil imports from Kazakhstan by 15.7% to 354,000 tons. Compared to December 2015, imports decreased by 6.4%.