FUZHOU, CHINA: Top Asian refiner Sinopec Corp expects crude oil imports from Iran to stay at 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) or slightly more next year, the company’s president said yesterday, a level unchanged from this year’s contract amount.

For the first nine months of this year, Iran had actually exported to China close to 500,000 bpd of crude, Chinese customs data showed, a quarter above the 2009 contract volume, partly because of supply cuts from top exporter Saudi Arabia. “The volume from Iran should be around 20 million tonnes next year. There won’t be a big increase if any,” Sinopec Corp’s president Wang Tianpu said.

Sinopec has meantime expected supplies from Saudi Arabia to reach 1 million bpd from next year, a level nearly 30 percent higher than the actual imports recorded in the first three quarters of 2009, to feed new refineries including one invested in by state-run Saudi Aramco. China, Iran’s second-largest crude buyer, lifted crude imports under term supply agreements from Tehran by a third in 2008 versus 2007.

Chinese refineries have occasionally sought extra Iranian crude beyond contract volumes as supplementary supply. Wang said that Sinopec’s planned LNG import terminal in the Chinese port city of Qingdao will gain government approval “very soon”.