IEA Trims China Oil-Import Forecast

China will use slightly less oil this year than previously expected, although its demand will grow by 3.8%, the International Energy Agency forecast Wednesday.

The news is significant for world oil markets as China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, underpins global crude prices because of its heavy import dependency. In January, the Chinese government said around 56% of the oil used by the country was imported.

China will need an additional 365,000 barrels a day of crude oil in 2013, up 3.8%, which is an average of 15,000 barrels a day less than forecast a month ago, the IEA said in its latest oil-market report.

Its prediction follows a downgrade from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday that trimmed the 2013 China oil demand growth outlook by 420,000 barrels a day, a rise of 4.1% instead of the 4.4% the EIA forecast last month.

"A recent spate of relatively subdued Chinese economic indicators supports our long-held view that Chinese oil demand growth has shifted gears," the Paris-based IEA said, noting that in April the International Monetary Fund cut its China 2013 economic growth forecast to 7.75% from 8%.

China's electricity output, a key barometer of industrial activity, grew just 4.1% from a year earlier in May compared with a 6.2% rise in April.

China's crude-oil imports fell a substantial 6% in May from year-earlier levels, to 5.66 million barrels a day, but were slightly higher than April's, Chinese customs data show.

Despite that, deliveries from Iran nearly doubled in May, to 715,000 barrels a day from 370,000 barrels daily in April, the IEA said. It attributed some of the increase to temporary bottlenecks at Chinese ports in late April.

China's main crude-oil supplier is Saudi Arabia, followed by Angola and Russia. Iran was ranked sixth in April, the most recent month for which a breakdown of import data is available.

(WSJ, edited by Topco）