Saudi Arabia’s crude oil shipments to China are on track to fall to roughly 10 million barrels in June — about 333,000 barrels per day — as elevated prices and the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to choke flows between the world’s largest oil exporter and its biggest customer, according to traders familiar with the matter.
The projected June volume represents a steep drop from the approximately 20 million barrels shipped in May, which was itself a record low at the time. Just months ago, before the Iran war upended global oil markets, Saudi Aramco was sending 45 to 57 million barrels per month to Chinese refiners.
Pricing Pressure and Buyer Pullback
Major Chinese refiners including Sinopec and Sinochem have reduced their lifting nominations for June, traders said, citing prices that remain too high despite a recent cut. Saudi Arabia lowered its June official selling price for Arab Light crude to Asia by $4 a barrel to a premium of $15.50 over the Oman/Dubai benchmark — down from the all-time high of $19.50 set for May. But the reduction fell short of the $5 to $12 cut that traders and refiners had expected, according to a Bloomberg survey. Chinese state-owned oil majors cut their refinery operating rates by a further 5% in April compared to the previous month, as broader crude imports fell 20% year-on-year to their lowest since July 2022.
Aramco Profits Soar, but CEO Warns of Long Recovery
The supply crunch has been a windfall for Aramco. On Sunday, the company reported adjusted net income of $33.6 billion for the first quarter of 2026, up 26% from a year earlier. The results were driven by higher oil prices and the full utilization of the kingdom’s 745-mile East-West pipeline, which reroutes crude from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing the blocked strait. The pipeline reached its full capacity of 7 million barrels per day in late March, with about 5 million barrels per day available for export.
Still, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser struck a cautionary tone. “Reopening routes is not the same as normalizing a market that has been deprived of about one billion barrels of oil,” Nasser told Reuters, warning that years of underinvestment have compounded the strain on already-low global inventories. The International Energy Agency has described the Hormuz disruption as “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.
