Turkey’s oil imports edged down, while liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) purchases surged in March from a year ago, data by the country’s energy watchdog showed Thursday.

Oil imports fell by 4% to 3.38 million tons, according to the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK) data. LPG imports were up 24.03% to 257,764 tons.

Crude oil imports, the category with the highest oil import volume, reduced by 10.7% during that period to 2.4 million tons, the energy watchdog said in its monthly oil market report.

In March, the highest amount of oil and oil products came in from Iraq at 1.18 million tons. Russia and Kazakhstan followed with 660,708 tons and 434,958 tons, respectively.

The falling demand for oil products from restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic reduced the overall oil import volumes.

Oil refinery product exports decreased by 34% to 637,996 tons and oil refinery product output also declined by 8% to 2.74 million tons in March.

While diesel production was down by 13.6% to 1.2 million tons, gasoline production decreased by nearly 27.1% to 292,416 tons.

Total domestic oil product sales in March decreased by 6.9% to 2.49 million tons compared to the same month of last year.

On the other hand, the LPG imports came from the U.S., Algeria, Kazakhstan, Russia, the Bahama Islands and Norway.

Turkey’s LPG production in March fell to 73,112 tons, marking a year-on-year drop of 23.09%.

Exports also saw a decrease of 0.61% to 17,895 tons in March from 18,005 tons a year ago.

Total LPG sales in the month increased by 13.78% to around 320,985 tons, comprising 255,397 tons of autogas, 56,507 tons of bottled LPG and 9,081 tons of bulk LPG.