Russia last year overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s biggest supplier of crude oil thanks in large part to increased demand from independent refineries, popularly called teapots. This is what statistics data released today by Beijing’s customs authority show. The average daily amount that Russian companies exported to China in 2016 stood at 1.05 million barrels, up by 25 percent from 2015. Saudi Arabia’s average daily shipments to the world’s second-largest oil consumer were 1.02 million barrels daily in the period, an amount representing a slight 0.9-percent uptick on 2015. Russia is likely to keep its place as top exporter to China this year as well, as long as demand from teapots remains intense: while China’s state oil companies are bound by long-term contracts with Saudi Arabia, the small refineries have taken advantage of more flexible export conditions offered by Russian exporters as well as from the proximity of Russia’s […]