Sinopec purchases Russian crude

China’s Sinopec Corp has cut its purchases of Russia’s ESPO crude oil in July as other buyers, including from India, were willing to pay higher prices.

Sinopec bid at discounts of about $20 a barrel below the price of Middle East benchmark Dubai on a free-on-board basis for July shipments, similar to what it paying for cargoes in May and June, while deals were done at $8 to $13 discounts.

A pull-back in Russian oil purchases by Sinopec, Asia’s biggest refiner, suggests that its earlier buying was driven by economics rather than political considerations.

Chinese and Indian oil companies have increased their Russian oil imports in May and June despite Western sanctions on Russia as a result of the Ukraine conflict that have upended the global oil trade.

Sinopec, through its trading arm Unipec, is expected to lift fewer cargoes in July after submitting lower bids to Russian exporters who then sold the cargos to trading companies and other Chinese clients that bid higher, said four sources who participate in the market and declined to be identified.

Sinopec had been the biggest buyer of ESPO, which loads from the port of Kozmino in Russia’s Far East, in the past two months, snapping up an estimated 20 million barrels, according to traders and data from tanker tracker Vortexa Analytics.