Recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that crude oil exports from the U.S. rose from 3.4 MMb/d in January to 3.9 MMb/d in February. The increase was largely due to higher exports to Asia Pacific, which rose by 290 Mb/d from the previous month to 1.8 MMb/d, overtaking the shipments that were scheduled to go to Europe by 135 Mb/d.
Interestingly, two destinations in the Far East — China and Singapore — were the top buyers of U.S. crude at 450 Mb/d, with shipments to China soaring by 52% month-on-month. The last time we noted higher volumes to China was in December 2020. Singapore imported record volumes of crude from the U.S. in February, followed by South Korea and the Netherlands.
