A Western base writes that European countries are still secretly buying oil from Russia despite Russia’s threat of sanctions.
Pak Sahafat – News sources say that Russian oil has opened its way to the European market in recent weeks. Threats and rhetoric about sanctions against Russia continue, but the country’s oil shipments are delivered to tankers, and while their destination is declared “unknown”, they enter European oil markets and are secretly traded there.
In April alone, an average of 1.6 million barrels of oil a day left Russia for unknown destinations, according to Fortune, citing tanker trackers tracking tanker movements.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal shows that this trend has recently increased, with more than 11.1 million barrels of oil delivered to unmanned tankers in April. Prior to the start of the Ukrainian war, the number of such shipments was almost zero.
Although the European Union has not yet formally imposed sanctions on oil imports from Russia, oil traders in Europe themselves have welcomed the possible sanctions. Fortune Database wrote, the traders are concerned that buying oil from Russia could be seen as government funding, which has been accused of committing “war crimes”.
But now, six weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cheap Russian oil is more tempting for European oil traders than they can get past.
In response to the question of what the term “unknown destination” means, Fortune writes that offshore oil is shipped to larger vessels and mixed with oil from other sources to make the point of origin unknown.
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The traders told the Wall Street Journal that the oil marketed as Latvian or Turkmen mixed oil contained large amounts of Russian oil.
But announcing the destination of the ships is not the only way for Russia to circumvent the sanctions. Another way is for ships to turn on their transponders. Fortune writes that this measure has increased by 600% since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
The United States, Canada, Britain and Australia are among the countries that have imposed sanctions on Russian oil, but the European Union, which is more dependent on Russian energy, has not yet decided on sanctions. Russia currently supplies 27 percent of Europe’s oil.
Russia ordered a military strike on Ukraine on March 24. This development came days after Moscow formally recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his military operation is aimed at “demilitarizing Ukraine” and “de-Naziizing” the country.
Russia has also said that Ukraine has not fulfilled its obligations under the Minsk agreements reached in 2014 and 2015 to resolve the dispute between separatists and Kiev.
Hours after the Russian invasion, Ukraine announced that it had cut off all diplomatic ties with the country. Western countries have repeatedly imposed sanctions on most of Moscow’s financial institutions, energy sector and political elite in response to Russian military action.
The European Union (EU) has pledged to cut gas imports from Russia by two-thirds a year. The 27-nation bloc is set to unveil in mid-May a plan outlining Brussels’ plan to cut off oil, gas and coal purchases from Russia.