In the 12 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an event that destabilized energy markets around the world, China’s appetite for Russian oil, natural gas and coal has grown by more than 50%, according to Bloomberg.

Beijing’s spending on Russian energy supplies, including oil and petroleum products, coal and natural gas, rose to $88 billion between February 2022 and February 2023, up from $57 billion last year, according to data released by China’s customs administration. previous 12 months.

These figures show that Russia is getting a reliable source of funding for its war machine despite international sanctions, while a neighboring country with a large appetite for energy is getting large amounts of fossil fuels, often at discounted prices.

Official data also shows that from February 2022 to February 2023, Russia was the main supplier of crude oil to China, overtaking Saudi Arabia. It was also the second largest supplier of coal after Indonesia and the third largest supplier of liquefied natural gas after Australia and Qatar. It should be noted that the data on the import of liquefied natural gas by China does not include the volume of Russian natural gas delivered through pipelines, data that China stopped making public earlier this year.

China’s imports of Russian oil rose to 89.3 million tonnes between February 2022 and February 2023, up from 78.4 million tonnes in the previous 12 months. China’s purchases of liquefied natural gas from Russia increased by 52% to 6.86 million tons, and coal imports increased by 33% to 76.4 million tons.

Also, according to official data, from February 2022 to February 2023, China’s imports of Russian aluminum almost doubled (a 94% increase) to 538,607 tons, meaning Beijing supported Russian aluminum production at a time when international sanctions halted Russian trade ordinary buyers of aluminum in Europe and other countries. (Agerpress)