Turkey’s oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) purchases both surged more than 20% in April compared to a year ago, data from the country’s energy watchdog showed Tuesday.

Oil imports increased by 21% to 3.57 million tons in the month versus April 2020, Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK) said in its monthly oil market report.

Crude oil imports, the category with the highest oil import volume, rose 11% to 2.61 million tons.

Turkey imported the highest amount of oil and oil products from Iraq at 1.05 million tons. Russia and Kazakhstan followed with 873,591 tons and 305,409 tons, respectively.

Oil imports and consumption in the country started to show growth this April due to a recovery from COVID-19 compared to the same month of 2020.

Oil refinery product exports were up by 2.4% to 887,639 tons and oil refinery product output also rose by 11.9% to 2.89 million tons in April.

While diesel production was down by 13.8% to 1.4 million tons, gasoline production fell by nearly 35.5% to 370,998 tons.

Total domestic oil product sales in April increased by 42% year-on-year to 2.44 million tons.

The LPG purchases were up by 23.7% to 224,912 tons in April from a year ago, the data showed.

The imports came from Algeria, Norway, the U.S., Kazakhstan and the Netherlands.

Turkey’s LPG production in the month rose to 83,772 tons, marking a year-on-year jump of 35.3%.

The increase in LPG imports and production in April reflects the slowdown after the first reported coronavirus case in Turkey in March last year when the country announced a country-wide lockdown that brought economic activity to a halt.

However, exports saw a decrease of 53.4% to 6,709 tons from 14,403 tons in April 2020.

Total LPG sales in the month increased by 19.6% to around 285,572 tons, comprising 220,961 tons of autogas, 56,387 tons of bottled LPG, and 8,224 tons of bulk LPG.