UPDATE 1 — China's crude stocks slump despite slight rise in September import rate

Crude imports drop to 9.03 million bpd in September, sapping China's oil stockpile September oil inventory draw is biggest on record, Kpler and Vortexa data show Iranian supply loss may be hard to fully replace, analyst says (Rewrites with details) By Sam Li and Lewis Jackson BEIJING, Oct 14 (Reuters) — China's September crude oil imports dropped 21.5% from a year earlier, customs data showed, with higher refinery runs and delayed crude arrivals contributing to the biggest monthly draw in the country's onshore crude inventories in analysts' records. The world's biggest oil buyer imported 37.1 million metric tons of crude oil in September, or 9.03 million barrels per day, with the daily import rate up 1.1% from the previous month, according to data from China's General Administration of Customs. In the first three quarters, China imported 357.97 million tons of crude oil, or 9.57 million bpd, down 15.3% from the same period last year. China's September seaborne crude oil imports stood at 7.6 million bpd, down from 9.9 million bpd a year earlier, according to Vortexa, with Iranian oil imports falling to 0.5 million bpd during the month. China's crude distillation capacity utilisation