Turkey's total oil imports decreased by 10.66% to 3 million tons while its natural gas imports surged by around 23% in February compared with the same month a year earlier, according to an energy watchdog’s data.

Crude oil imports, the category with the highest oil import volume, fell by 0.69% during that period to reach 2.32 million tons, the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) said in its monthly oil market report Monday.

In February 2020, Turkey imported the highest amount of crude from Iraq at 963,024 tons. Russia and Kazakhstan followed with 694,197 tons and 207,437 tons, respectively.

Oil refinery product output increased by 5.89% to 2.67 million tons in February 2020. While diesel production was up 46.35% to 1.24 million tons, gasoline production decreased by nearly 13.25% to 373,678 tons in the same month.

Total domestic oil product sales in February rose by 3.58% to 2.09 million tons compared with the same month of 2019.

On the other hand, natural gas imports increased to 5.26 billion cubic meters (bcm) in the month, from 4.28 bcm in February last year, the data showed.

This February, the country imported 2.74 bcm of natural gas via pipeline, while 2.52 bcm was purchased as LNG.

Russia was the top country for Turkey's natural gas imports reaching 1.11 bcm while the U.S. followed with 931 million cubic meters (mcm) and Azerbaijan with 859 million cubic meters (mcm).

Turkey's total gas consumption increased by 11.4% to approximately 5.67 bcm this February from around 5.09 bcm in February 2019.

The amount of natural gas in storage decreased by 11.7% to 1.91 bcm in February compared to 2.17 bcm in February last year. Gas production also fell by around 12.1% to 37 mcm from 42.1 mcm over the same period.

In addition, the country’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports increased by 27.9% to 232,090 tons in the same period, according to the data.

Imports came from the U.S., Algeria, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Greece, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Russia. The country’s LPG production increased in February to 89,553 tons – a year-on-year increase of 12.41%.

Exports increased by nearly 269% to 17,905 tons in February 2020 compared with February 2019.

Total LPG sales increased to around 298,963 tons in February 2020 with a 4.43% jump, including 240,667 tons of auto gas, 50,155 tons of bottled LPG and 8,140 tons of bulk LPG.