China’s independent refiners are stepping up purchases of Iranian crude held in bonded storage and on tankers idling offshore after Beijing issued a fresh round of import quotas late last month, Bloomberg reported.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said the new allowances follow a fourth-quarter slowdown linked to exhausted permits and sanctions-related frictions that curbed arrivals.
The so-called teapot processors in Shandong province dominate China’s intake of discounted Iranian barrels, but overall demand may stay subdued through year-end as weak margins persist, according to analytics firm Vortexa cited by Bloomberg.
Two supertankers that had been waiting off China discharged this week, including the Panama-flagged Ill Gap with about 2 million barrels at Rizhao, the report added.
Iranian crude held in floating storage has climbed to the highest in roughly two and a half years as exports outpaced Chinese buying, shipping tracker Kpler estimates.
Discounts have widened as cargoes accumulate.
Offers for Iran Light this week were around $8–$9 a barrel below ICE Brent, compared with roughly $4 in August, traders told Bloomberg.
The pressure reflects a well-supplied global market and intermittent bottlenecks on Chinese intake tied to quota availability and compliance risks.
In late October, Reuters reported Iranian barrels to China changing hands at the steepest discounts in over a year amid tighter Western sanctions on Iran and Russia and a shortage of teapot import quotas.
China allocates crude import volumes to non-state refiners in tranches. Analysts said the latest allotment gave about 20 teapots some 7–8 million tons combined, enabling refiners to clear on-water inventories and draw from bonded tanks.
But with refinery margins thin and some buyers wary after recent sanctions on firms and facilities accused of handling Iranian oil, industry watchers expect sanctioned crude to continue accumulating on the water into December.
AFP reported that at least 34 ships linked to suspected sanctions evasion were Cook Islands–flagged over the period, including 20 cited on US sanctions lists and a further 14 on a British blacklist.
The flag is administered by Maritime Cook Islands, a private operator that runs the registry for the self-governing Pacific territory.
The analysis said shipowners could obtain Cook Islands papers without visiting the country, using a small beachside office – located next to a pizza shop – as their point of contact. The office serves as the headquarters for what AFP described as one of the world’s fastest-growing shipping registries.
New Zealand, which has a free-association relationship with the Cook Islands and retains responsibilities that include foreign affairs, said the findings show a policy divergence with the microstate and that Wellington has repeatedly raised concerns with its government.
“New Zealand continues to hold serious concerns about how the Cook Islands has been managing its shipping registry, which it has repeatedly expressed to the Cook Islands government over many years... This is a completely unacceptable and untenable foreign policy divergence,” said a spokesman for Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
Maritime Cook Islands said it does not harbor sanctioned vessels and that any ships accused of sanctions-busting are promptly deleted from the registry, adding that it conducts due diligence checks before registration.
Western sanctions aim to limit oil revenue for Tehran and Moscow.
Analysts say a “shadow fleet” uses reflagging, opaque ownership and ship-to-ship transfers to move cargoes outside mainstream maritime services – a practice that places added scrutiny on flag registries as enforcement widens to entities connected to suspect voyages.
Patients in Mashhad said rations shrank from two months to one week before stocks of the drug (mycophenolic acid 360 mg) “fell to zero,” with pharmacists advising a move to domestically made equivalents, the ILNA news agency reported.
Fatemeh Pour-Rezagholi, secretary of Iran’s Kidney Transplant Scientific Association, said originator-brand supplies have not been distributed recently, citing foreign-exchange constraints, sanctions-related frictions and customs delays.
She added that Iranian versions are available and effective for most patients, but unplanned brand changes can be stressful or risky for those early post-transplant or with prior rejection. Importers have indicated the original brand may return later in winter, according to ILNA.
Doctors and pharmacists told ILNA that 70-80% of recipients tolerate domestic formulations, but roughly 10-20% may require a specific brand or closer therapeutic-drug monitoring.
Patient groups and clinicians are urging clearer import timetables, steadier FX allocation for critical transplant drugs and contingency guidance to minimize unplanned switches.
Clinicians say the fiscal and human costs are far higher if grafts fail and patients return to dialysis, and have asked regulators to protect a baseline of imports for high-risk cases while stabilizing domestic supply for the majority.
US sanctions policy formally exempts most medicines and many medical devices, with humanitarian channels – such as Switzerland’s state-backed payment mechanism – designed to process vetted transactions.
In practice, suppliers and aid groups say persistent “over-compliance” by global banks, shippers and insurers fearful of sanctions risk, which can delay or block payments, shipments and insurance even for lawful medical goods.
Economists also point to the rial’s volatility and domestic pricing and procurement rules as recurring hurdles that raise import costs and complicate supply planning.
According to Mehr News on Monday, Iran has raised medicine prices several times in recent months under a “realistic pricing” policy meant to support the domestic pharmaceutical industry, but insurance coverage has not kept pace – leaving patients to shoulder a growing share of drug costs as reimbursements lag behind the hikes.
