Russia held its spot as China’s top crude oil supplier for a fifth month in a row in July, with shipments up 54 percent over a year earlier, data showed on Wednesday. Russian shipments last month came in at 4.97 million tonnes, or about 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd), the General Administration of Customs said in a more a detailed breakdown of commodity trade data released on Aug. 8. For the first seven months of the year, Russia’s volumes to China grew nearly 16 percent year-on-year to 34.22 million tonnes, or 1.18 million bpd. China bought a total of 34.74 million tonnes of crude oil in July, or about 8.18 million bpd, down from June but still up about 12 percent from a year earlier. Imports in the first seven months grew 13.6 percent year-on-year to 247 million tonnes, or 8.51 million bpd, Saudi Arabia […]