South Korea Iran Oil Imports Drop in March

South Korea's oil imports from Iran fell 76 percent in March from a month earlier as one of the two Korean refiners that import the crude started a shutdown for maintenance, according to Korean customs data and a refining source.

South Korea imported 274,808 tonnes of Iranian crude last month, or 64,979 barrels per day (bpd), compared with 1.12 million tonnes a month ago and 556,658 tonnes a year ago, preliminary customs data showed on Tuesday.

In the first three months of the year, South Korea shipped in 1.67 million tonnes, or 136,281 bpd, down 13 percent from a year ago and similar to the average 134,000 bpd that Seoul took from Iran throughout 2013.

Under the Geneva accord between Iran and six major powers that took effect in January, South Korea and other Asian buyers can import crude form the Islamic nation at the sanctions-reduced rates reached at the end of 2013.

Of four South Korean refiners, SK Energy and Hyundai Oilbank are the only ones that buy Iranian oil on a regular basis.

Their Iranian oil imports in February surged 104 percent from a year earlier as refiners hiked purchases ahead of the maintenance shutdown starting from March.

South Korea's Iranian crude imports can also vary from month to month as one of the two refiners that buy from the OPEC member receives the oil only every other month.

SK Energy, South Korea's largest refiner, will shut its 260,000 bpd No. 5 crude distillation unit (CDU) and its 57,000-bpd No.1 gasoline-making unit in the second quarter for maintenance after it closed a vacuum residue desulfurizer (VRDS) from March to April.

Hyundai Oilbank will also shut its No.1 110,000-bpd CDU in April for maintenance.

Iran's top four crude oil buyers lifted their purchases 17.2 percent in February from a year ago, as the OPEC member continues to ship more oil than allowed under a deal that eases some of the sanctions aimed at its disputed nuclear programme.

Under the interim agreement reached in November between Iran and six major powers and that took effect in January, the Islamic nation is supposed to hold its exports at an average of 1 million bpd for the six months to July 20.

But imports by its four biggest buyers, China, India, Japan and South Korea, as well as Turkey, have totalled more than that since at least November, and tanker tracking data indicates only a slight slowdown in Tehran's exports in March.

Meanwhile, South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, imported a total of 10.2 million tonnes of crude last month, or 2.4 million bpd, compared with 9.9 million tonnes in March 2013, the customs data showed.
Final data for March crude oil imports will be released by state-run Korea National Oil Corp later this month.

(By Meeyoung Cho, additional reporting by Jane Chung; editing by Joseph Radford)