Tale of two oil buyers: Saudi crude exports to China soar, US loses out

With China grabbing more Saudi crude, flows to India, Japan and South Korea also appear to have declined last month

Signals from oil tankers last month suggest that Saudi Arabia is sending an ever-larger portion of its crude to China -- with the US losing out.

Saudi Arabia’s observed exports to China soared to 1.74 million barrels a day in July, the highest since Bloomberg began tracking the tanker shipments in January 2017. At the same time, the kingdom’s shipments to the US appear to have tumbled to 161,000 barrels a day, the lowest during that same period.

The divergence illustrates the current state of energy geopolitics. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries -- of which Saudi Arabia is the