ISTANBUL:
As European refineries shun away from Russia’s flagship export crude,Urals, India has been picking up more of Russia’s Black Sea and Balticcargoes, motivated by large discounts, according to data compiled byreal-time energy cargo tracker, Vortexa.
Russia exports its Urals from the Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust Luga butto a lesser extent from the Black Sea port of Novorossisyk.
“Because of the larger proportion of Urals exported from the Baltic versusthe Black Sea, the most dramatic changes for on-the-water volumes are beingseen on the former,” Vortexa said in a recent analysis.
Urals, with Baltics origin, have increased sharply since the start ofRussia’s war in Ukraine and reached 36 million barrels as of April 10, thehighest on-the-water volumes since the second quarter of 2020 when globalsupplies peaked, according to Vortexa. Black Sea origin Urals has alsogrown while on-the-water volumes have grown more modestly to around 7million barrels.
“Rising on-the-water volumes for Baltic Urals are a function of relativelystable Urals exports along with very limited buying from the usual targetmarket. This has increased the time spent for these cargoes on the water,either because they are sailing to further afield, including in Asia or atleast traveling in that direction, awaiting orders as a deal is concluded,”it said in the analysis.
With the start of the war, the US announced an embargo on Russian fossilfuels while the UK decided to phase out imports by the year’s end.
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Although the European Union (EU) announced several sanction packages onRussia, only Russian coal imports have been included in the fifth sanctionspackage. Nonetheless, the EU is currently evaluating the impacts of an oilembargo on Russia, the bloc’s biggest oil and oil product source.
Oil is largest source of export revenue for Russia
According to Primary Vision Network data, the EU imports around 11 millionbarrels of crude oil and oil products daily.
Russia accounted for 29% of EU imports in 2021. Last year, the EU’s totalcrude imports from Russia amounted to about 2.2 million barrels per day andoil products totaled 1.2 million barrels. -Anadolu Agency
