PetroChina cancelled the petrol and jet fuel cargoes it had scheduled for October, and Zhejiang Petrochemical put no product shipment on its programme for the holiday week that began on 1 October, 4 sources told Reuters. The suspension is for October and runs until further notice, and whether exports resume after China's holiday closes on 7 October depends on its fuel stocks, in the account Reuters carried. Beijing's priority is domestic supply after the Iran war's disruption of Middle Eastern crude, the sources said, and Oilprice.com reported China's petrol and diesel inventories at multi-year lows.
It is the second shutdown this year. In early March, with the Strait of Hormuz blocked, the National Development and Reform Commission called in PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, Sinochem and Zhejiang Petrochemical, asked for an immediate suspension of product exports and told them to stop signing new contracts and to negotiate the cancellation of agreed cargoes, Bloomberg reported on 5 March. The curbs eased in July, and Beijing has since set the export programme month by month against its own stocks.
The suspension is for October and runs until further notice, and whether exports resume after China's holiday closes on 7 October depends on its fuel stocks, in the account Reuters carried.
Mongolia's October orders put numbers on the exposure. Its fuel headquarters held its briefing on Thursday, and Ch. Khishigdalai, head of the petroleum policy implementation department at the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, put the month's confirmed orders at 77,000 tonnes of AI-92 in total, 8,000 of them from China, an unspecified volume by sea from South Korea and Singapore, and the rest from Russia, News.mn reported.
Diesel orders are about 160,000 tonnes from Russia and more than 10,000 from China, so the Chinese share of the month comes to more than 18,000 tonnes, CAW's addition, out of imports the headquarters expects to exceed 260,000 tonnes.
September's book shows where the shortage sits. Mongolia imported 279,000 tonnes of oil products last month, about 64,000 of them AI-92, against a monthly use of about 230,000 tonnes split 65% diesel and 35% petrol, Khishigdalai said, and a petrol month of that size, with long queues, left the market about 10,000 tonnes short. The ministry's own split puts petrol use near 80,000 tonnes a month, CAW's arithmetic, so September's diesel surplus did nothing for the petrol line.
Importers used to buy AI-92 at $792 a tonne and pay 2 months ahead, he said, and the price rise has left them short of working capital, a question now being discussed with the finance ministry and Mongolbank as one of support for purchases.
Kyrgyzstan's second supplier is on the record without a tonne beside it. Deputy cabinet chairman Erlist Akunbekov thanked the Chinese side last week, at a meeting with its customs chief, Sun Meijun, for keeping fuel supplies stable, while the country's book runs on 100,000 tonnes of Russian fuel a month to the end of the year under an intergovernmental agreement. Bishkek's pumps opened October at 99.90 som for diesel and 87.90 for AI-92, the bottom of the ranges agreed on 11 September, with the state's subsidy at 42.27 som a litre of diesel, by the antimonopoly service's figures Kaktus carried on Thursday.
Russia's door was already narrowing. Its producers' diesel export ban runs to 31 October under resolution 1252 of 29 September, with supplies under intergovernmental agreements as the exception that keeps the region's tonnes moving, and the petrol ban runs to 31 January 2027. Oil-product supplies to Tajikistan were among the subjects when President Rahmon received Russia's deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, in Dushanbe on Thursday, Interfax reported.
For buyers who pay in dollars at the border, the first effect is the price. Asian diesel refining margins rose to about $75 a barrel, a high for the week, and the October to November diesel spread reached a 2-week high on the expectation of no Chinese cargoes, by the market lines Reuters carried.
What changes next: whether the rail flow to Mongolia through Zamyn-Uud and the supplies Kyrgyzstan thanked Beijing for fall under the same instruction is printed nowhere. Unresolved: the text of the directive, which no agency has published, and the share of Mongolia's 77,000 tonnes that the sea route from Korea and Singapore is meant to carry.