The following are some key facts and figures about trade and energy relations between China and Iran, based on Chinese government figures unless otherwise specified:

TRADE: Two-way trade fell by 23.3 percent on year to 21.2 billion dollars in 2009, partly due to UN sanctions already in place against Iran and slumping international oil prices during the financial crisis.

But it still marked a huge increase from 14.4 billion dollars in 2006.

Imports from Iran stood at 13.3 billion dollars in 2009, a slump of 32.2 percent from 2008.

China's exports to Iran declined marginally, by 1.6 percent, to 7.9 billion dollars in 2009.

ENERGY: Iran was the third-largest crude supplier to China last year, after Saudi Arabia and Angola, with shipments reaching 23.15 million tonnes, up 8.6 percent on year and accounting for 11.4 percent of China's total crude imports in 2009.

INVESTMENT: China has a huge stake in Iran's energy sector.

Iran's vice oil minister Hossein Noqrehkar-Shirazi said last year that China would invest 48-50 billion dollars in oil and gas ventures.

Up to 40 percent of this investment has been finalised through signed contracts, he said, according to the Iranian government-backed Petroenergy Information Network (PIN).

2007

Sinopec, Asia's largest refiner, in 2007 signed a contract with Iran for the multi-billion-dollar development of the Yadavaran oil field in southwestern Iran, which is estimated to hold 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude.

Sinopec would invest two billion dollars for the first phase of the project, which will have three phases all together, according to previous Chinese media reports.

2009

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's top oil producer, won a 1.76-billion-dollar contract for the initial development of the North Azadegan oil field in western Iran, Iranian officials said in January 2009.

Production from the field was expected to reach 75,000 barrels per day in four years' time, officials said.

In a memorandum of understanding signed with Iran's National Iranian Oil Company, CNPC agreed to cover 90 percent of the estimated 2.5-billion-dollar cost to develop the South Azadegan oil field, PIN reported in July.

Azadegan is the biggest united oil field discovered in the last 30 years and has reserves of 42 billion barrels of oil, it said.

CNPC has also signed a nearly five-billion-dollar deal with Iran to develop phase 11 of the South Pars gas field, taking over the project from France's Total, according to PIN.

South Pars is the world's largest reservoir of gas and is shared by Iran and Qatar. The Iranian part is divided into 24 phases, it said.

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