Russia's Oil Export Loophole Runs Through Greece

[D. Schlenk]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/russias-oil-export-loophole-runs-through-greece


Russia's Oil Export Loophole Runs Through Greece


by Tyler Durden

Thursday, May 26, 2022


By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russias-Oil-Export-Loophole-Runs-Through-Greece.html

Last month, we reported that India had doubled down on
Russian oil after the west slapped a chain of sanctions on
Moscow. India has never been a big buyer of Russian crude
despite needing to import 80% of its needs. In a typical
year, India imports just 2-5% of its crude from Russia,
roughly the same proportion as the United States did before
it announced a 100% ban on Russian energy commodities.
Indeed, India imported only 12 million barrels of Russian
crude in 2021, with the majority of its oil coming from
Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria.

https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/greek%20tanker.jpg?itok=M3t3MUUN

But reports emerged of a "significant uptick" in Russian oil
deliveries bound for India. Matt Smith, the lead oil analyst
at Kpler, told CNBC that since the beginning of March, five
cargoes of Russian oil, or about 6 million barrels, have
been loaded and are bound for India. In other words, India
imported half as much crude from Russia in one month as it
did in an entire year.

China, on the other hand, had seen crude imports from Russia
in the first two months of the year actually declined 9.1%
to 1.57 mb/d largely due to a government crackdown on
private Chinese refiners known as teapots. But with years
of experience shipping banned Iranian oil using various
cloaking methods, China is expected to remain one of
Russia's biggest oil customers.

Well, it appears that Russia won't be lacking new buyers of
its deeply discounted Urals any time soon.

Refinitiv Eikon via Reuters has just reported that Greece
has emerged as a new hub for Russian oil via ship-to-ship
(STS) loadings. According to the report, April shipments of
Russian fuel oil with Greece as a destination clocked in at
nearly a million tonnes, about double March levels, and are
expected to reach new highs in May.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/greece-emerging-new-hub-russian-ship-to-ship-fuel-oil-exports-data-shows-2022-05-19/

Russia has been increasing fuel exports to Greece, with
shipments set to jump to about 2.5 million barrels,
according to data from oil analytics firm Vortexa.

Trading Russian crude and oil products remain legal for
now because EU members cannot seem to agree on the
methodology of a complete ban.



Weathering tough sanctions

For all the tough talk about abandoning Russian energy
commodities, Russia is still managing to sell a good amount
of its oil and gas, thanks to the fact that some of the
world's biggest commodity traders have little compunction
against financing Putin's war machine.

According to ship tracking and port data, Switzerland's
Vitol, Glencore, and Gunvor as well as Singapore's
Trafigura, have all continued to lift large volumes of
Russian crude and products, including diesel.

https://www.ft.com/content/ff9208bd-182e-439b-885e-ee6bf2c89e8e

Vitol has pledged to stop buying Russian crude by the end
of this year, but that's still a long way from today.
Trafigura said it would stop buying crude from Russia's
state-run Rosneft by May 15th, but is free to buy cargoes
of Russian crude from other suppliers. Glencore has said it
wouldn't enter any "new" trading business with Russia. But
the reality is that while the G7 has committed to banning or
phasing out Russian oil imports, and while the U.S.,
Canada, the UK, and Australia have imposed outright bans,
the EU is still unable to move forward, with Hungary
holding a ban hostage. Meanwhile, India and China are
making up for much of the losses for Russia.

A lot of the blame falls on Switzerland. The lion's share of
Russian raw materials is traded via Switzerland and its
nearly 1,000 commodity firms.

Switzerland is an important global financial hub with a
thriving commodities sector, despite the fact that it is far
from all the global trade routes and has no access to the
sea, no former colonial territories, and no significant raw
materials of its own.

Oliver Classen, media officer at the Swiss NGO Public Eye,
says that "this sector accounts for a much larger part of
the GDP in Switzerland than tourism or the machinery
industry". According to a 2018 Swiss government report,
commodity trading volume is nearly $1 trillion ($903.8
billion).