Source: Global Times
Shouting sanctions and bans to evade tracking privately, Europe "hides the sky and crosses the sea" to buy Russian oil!
At a time when the European Union plans to further strengthen the energy ban on Russia, Russia's oil exports to EU countries continue to rebound. The Us "Wall Street Journal" reported on the 22nd that in recent weeks, Russia has increased its oil transportation to its main customers - the European Union, and since April, Russian oil imports from the Netherlands, Greece and other countries have soared sharply. The Wall Street Journal said an "opaque market" was taking shape. Oil from Russian ports is increasingly being shipped to "unknown destinations" . German media believe that Europe's real demand for energy has forced it to continue to buy Russian oil in large quantities, and traders are using an ancient method to transport Russian oil "across the sea" to European ports.
Imports from many European countries doubled
Oil exports from Russian ports to EU member states have risen to an average of 1.6 million barrels per day so far in April, compared with an average of 1.3 million barrels per day in March, according to tanker tracker TankerTrackers. Data from Kpler, another commodity data analytics company, shows a similar trend. The Wall Street Journal said more and more oil was being sent out of Russian ports. European countries desperately need oil to keep their economies running and prevent fuel prices from pushing inflation data that has already crossed all-time highs. But Western energy companies and oil middlemen want to "trade quietly" to avoid sanctions and criticism.
Traders say the current average price of Russian oil is $20-30 below Brent's benchmark price. Ubsyin Commodities analyst Giovanni Stanovo said there are currently significant discounts on Russian oil on the market, which is very attractive to buyers. Among European buyers importing Russian oil, Romania, Estonia, Greece and Bulgaria more than doubled their Russian oil imports in April from the March average, all at more than 100,000 bpd.
The Dutch, the largest buyer of Russian oil in recent times, saw the sharpest surge in oil imports, rising from an average of about 500,000 barrels per day last month to about 650,000 barrels. Some buyers are eager to complete their business to circumvent new restrictions that may arise. In recent weeks, a number of multinational oil majors and commodity trading companies have chartered vessels to transport crude oil from Russian oil export terminals in the Black and Baltic Seas to EU ports, including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and Spain's Repsol. Ship tracking data shows that the oil cargo carried by these ships arrived in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands this month. According to the Swiss newspaper "Glimpse", Swiss commodity traders are also involved in Russia's oil trading. According to a report by the Swiss Embassy in Moscow, 80% of Russian commodities are traded through Switzerland.
"Ancient ways" to circumvent sanctions
"How does the West secretly buy Russian oil?" Germany's "Manager Magazine" reported on the 23rd that traders are using an ancient method to transport Russian oil to European ports " in secret.
According to the Maritime Analysis Agency, more and more oil is being shipped from Russian ports to "unknown destinations." As of April, more than 11.1 million barrels of oil had been loaded onto tankers with no predetermined routes.
Analysts and traders say the use of "unknown destination" markings often means that oil on board ships is transshipped at sea to larger tankers. Russian crude is here mixed with crude oil from other sources, an "age-old practice of evading sanctions" that has previously been used by oil exports from sanctioned countries such as Iran and Venezuela.
In mid-April, an oil tanker off the coast of Gibraltar took over three shipments of oil from ships departing from Russia's Baltic ports of Ustiluga and Primosk. Ship tracking data shows the tanker set sail from South Korea and is now heading to the port of Rotterdam.
Igor Yushkov, an expert at Russia's National Energy Security Fund, described the "grey" scheme of European buyers to ship Russian oil: First, a baltic tanker would shut down its transponder and head to a port in northern Russia, where it would load Russian oil and go to sea. The tanker then sails to a larger tanker waiting on the high seas to reload Russian oil through offshore loading operations (pictured left). Next, the tanker turned on the transponder and reappeared on the radar. Since the website that tracks the tanker cannot track movement, no one can determine the amount of Russian oil delivered in this way.
By doing so, tankers mix Russian oil with other oils. According to Shell, if Russian oil is mixed with oil from other countries in a ratio of 49 to 51 percent, the new oil cargo becomes a "Latvian blend", a "Turkmenistan blend" or any other oil mixture, and it is almost impossible to prove that it is Russian oil.
Formally, Yushkov said, the plan was perfectly legitimate. Once the EU decides to impose an oil embargo on Russia, such "Iranian-style" shipments will be a way for Russian oil to circumvent Western sanctions.
It is difficult to bear higher energy costs
According to professionals familiar with crude oil transportation in Hamburg, Germany, for many years, Russian oil has generally been transported to Europe by tanker, and the main route is the recent "gray" plan to concentrate the Baltic Sea port to the port of Hamburg and the port of Rotterdam, and the oil refining centers in Western Europe are mostly concentrated in the above two places. Each of these tankers can carry about 600,000 barrels of oil, and the round-trip voyage time is about two weeks. Although the EU has not imposed an oil embargo on Russia, some countries have begun to impose partial embargoes because of the pressure of sanctions, or ban Russian ships from docking, etc., resulting in tankers having to be transported through "curves".
Behind Europe's shouts of sanctions on Russian energy and the purchase of Russian oil through various "gray" schemes are the economic pressures in which inflation data continue to rise below historical extremes. Eurostat said prices of goods and services in the euro area reached record highs in March due to soaring energy prices caused by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Eurostat last week adjusted previously estimated year-on-year inflation in consumer prices for March to 7.4 percent in its final assessment. That's well above the ECB's previously set of 2 percent, compared to 5.9 percent year-over-year inflation in February. Among them, energy prices rose by 44.7% year-on-year, which was the main reason for the april inflation data.
Country-by-country, Germany's march inflation rose to 7.3 percent, the highest since German reunification in 1990, while France's Consumer Price Index rose 4.5 percent year-on-year and 1.4 percent month-on-month in March, the largest year-over-year increase since December 1985. In the non-EU country of the United Kingdom, inflation reached 7% in March, the highest level in 30 years.