NEW York (Oil Price) - Crude oil exports out of Iran rebounded in the second half of December, from a slow start to the month, according to vessel-tracking firm TankerTrackers.com.
“Iran’s crude oil exports have rebounded sharply after a slower first half of December 2024,” the tracking service has posted on X, without providing numbers.
It came nearly a month after reports suggested that Iranian oil exports had dropped to multi-month lows mainly because of an increase in domestic demand and also because of growing political and military tensions in the region.
Kpler, another major data analytics firm, said in mid-December that Iranian oil exports to China had reached an average of 1.31 million barrels per day (bpd) in November, down 0.524 million bpd from October and the lowest reported in four months.
The company said new U.S. sanctions affecting Iran’s oil transport arrangements with Chinese customers had also influenced the shipments.
It said that Iran’s floating oil supplies near Singapore and Malaysia had increased in early December because of declining deliveries to China. 
Iranian Oil Ministry authorities rejected the figures and said there had been no major change in the volume of exports to China.
Some other sources said a sudden fall of the government in Syria, a major customer of Iranian oil in the past year, had also affected the supplies.
They said developments in Syria had provided the Chinese customers with increased negotiating power on prices because more Iranian oil shipments were being rerouted to China after the ouster of Syrian president Basher al-Assad in early December.
Iran has been supplying a bulk of its crude oil to private buyers in China in the past years to avoid US sanctions that restrict deliveries to state buyers.