China signals to state giants to buy US oil and grains

Beijing

CHINA will import record volumes of US oil and is likely to ship more US soya after Beijing signalled to state-run refiners and grains purchasers that they should buy more to help ease tensions between the two top economies, trade sources said on Wednesday.

China pledged at the weekend to increase imports from its top trading partner to avert a trade war that could damage the global economy. Energy and commodities were high on Washington's list of products for sale.

The United States is also seeking better access for imports of genetically modified crops into China under the deal.

As the two sides stepped back from a full-blown trade war, Washington neared a deal on Tuesday to lift its ban on US firms supplying Chinese telecoms gear maker ZTE Corp, and Beijing announced tariff cuts on car imports.

But US President Donald Trump indicated on Wednesday that negotiations were still short of his objectives when he said any deal would need a "different structure".

China is the world's top importer of both oil and soya, and already buys significant volumes of both from the United States.

It is unclear how much more Chinese importers will buy from the United States than they would have otherwise, but any additional shipments would contribute to cutting the trade surplus, as demanded by Mr Trump.

Asia's largest oil refiner, China's Sinopec will boost crude imports from the United States to an all-time high in June as part of Chinese efforts to cut the surplus, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.

Sinopec's trading arm Unipec has bought 16 million barrels, or about 533,000 barrels per day, of US crude to load in June, they said, the largest volume ever to be lifted in a month by the company and worth about US$1.1 billion. "The government has encouraged us to lift more US crude," one of the sources said.

China has been one of the top buyers of US crude exports since Washington lifted a 40-year ban on shipments in late 2015. Since then, US crude exports have risen rapidly as output from shale fields hits record highs. Exports are straining US pipeline and port capacity, and may be reaching a limit until capacity expansion underway are completed, one of the sources said.

"We want to buy more but they might not be able to export more," the source said.

Other Chinese refiners are looking to reconfigure their plants so they could buy and process US oil, one trade source said.

In agriculture, China's state grain stockpiler Sinograin returned this week to the US soyabean market for the first time since early April, two sources said. Soyabeans are America's top agricultural export to China, worth US$12 billion last year, and the absence of Chinese buyers from the market had left US farmers wondering if their biggest buyers was going to want their next harvest.

Sinograin enquired about prices for US soyabeans this week, traders said, which market participants interpreted as a sign that government curbs on buying American goods had been lifted. "Sinograin is in the market today asking US suppliers to make offers for shipment of old-crop as well as new-crop beans for shipment for August onwards," said a source who works at a private soyabean crushing company in China. REUTERS