According to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday, Russian supplies of fuel oil to China are forecasted to reach an all-time high of 350,000 barrels for May, according to Kpler ship-tracking data.

The news outlet is attributing the surge to smaller Chinese refineries which have increased their purchases of fuel oil, which is used in blending, and is less valuable than more highly refined gasoline or diesel.

After February, shipments of Russian fuel oil began to surge, as the EU-G7 price cap on Russian petroleum products went into effect.

Bloomberg noted that flows skyrocketed for the past several months, after Shandong province, home to most of China’s independent refineries, began performing quality checks on another popular feedstock, bitumen mixtures.

Jianan Sun, a London-based analyst with Energy Aspects, when asked about the data, said, “We anticipate that fuel oil inflows to China will remain high in May and will increase further from June.”

In January, China lowered its crude import quota for the first two batches of 2023 compared to last year. Practically, that meant that refineries would need to draw upon other feedstocks, such as fuel oil, in order to produce their refined products.

Sun noted that in 2023, 16.2 tons have been allocated, of which half may already have been expended by the end of April.

Analysts are predicting the the world’s second largest consumer of oil will increase its demand during this quarter, as the recent surge of Covid infections abates in China’s largest cities, and citizens return more fully to their normal lives.

Sun went on to point out the Russian refiners are expected to increase their supplies of high-sulfur straight-run fuel oil and distillate-rich M100 grades being shipped to Asia by up to 140,000 barrels per day in the next weeks.

Viktor Katona, a Kpler analyst, said to Bloomberg that currently up to 40% of all fuel oil imported by China comes from Russia.