Taiwan's refinery throughput for March climbed 14 percent from the previous month to 29.12 million barrels, or about 939,312 barrels per day, government data showed on Monday.
Crude imports for March rose 30 percent to 28.8 million barrels, with close to 3 million barrels of Iranian crude delivered.
Taiwan's state run refinery CPC Corp will temporarily halt imports of Iranian crude only from July, a company official said in March, joining a growing number of Iran's Asian customers to cut imports under pressure from the United States, which will impose sanctions from the end of June on buyers of Iranian oil.
By July, the company would have imported two-thirds of the 7-8 million barrels of crude it has contracted to buy from Iran this year, the official said.
Overall imports from the Middle East were higher, with volume from Oman doubling to 2 million barrels, imports from the United Arab Emirates climbing 60 percent to 2.2 million barrels and from Saudi Arabia up 36 percent to 9.8 million barrels.
Diesel exports from Taiwan rose 40 percent, as Formosa Petrochemical Corp resumed selling spot cargoes for the first time since November.
Formosa Petrochemical's diesel offering in the spot market had been irregular as it focused on fulfilling term obligations since a fire in 2010 that destroyed one of two residue desulphuriser units (RDS) with a capacity of about 80,000 barrels per day (bpd). The damaged unit was originally scheduled to re-start in early April, but this has since been delayed because of a lubricant leak.
A company spokesman said Formosa had bought additional sour crude in preparation for the RDS restart, but was unlikely to re-sell the cargoes because the delay was expected to be short.
Source: Reuters