Trade for March-loading Russian oil in top buyer Asia has stalled as a wide price gap between buyers and sellers emerged in China after costs for chartering tankers unaffected by U.S. sanctions jumped, according to traders and shipping data.
Sweeping US sanctions on Russia’s oil industry are unlikely to result in a “large hit” to production, as higher freight rates and the nation’s cheap crude support the trade, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The Biden Administration’s final sanctions on Russian oil trade were the most aggressive yet and sanctioned dozens of vessels that Russia used to ship the ESPO crude blend from its Far East port of Kozmino to China’s independent refiners.
Just days after the US imposed sweeping sanctions on the Russian oil industry, NATO committed to a new strategy in the Baltic Sea designed to protect critical undersea infrastructure including pipelines from sabotage attacks it said are linked to Russian shadow fleets.
In October of that year, Opec+ members agreed to cut output by 2 million bpd oil after benchmark prices fell by around a quarter from above $110 per barrel as recession fears trumped conflict-related supply concerns.
Russia claimed it damaged ground infrastructure of one of the largest natural gas storage sites in Ukraine’s Lviv region during a series of attacks on the country’s energy sector on Wednesday.
Russia has slammed the new hefty U.S. sanctions on its oil industry and exports and vowed to move forward with major domestic oil and gas projects, claiming that it remains “a key and reliable player in the global fuel market.”
Following Friday’s U.S. sanctions against tankers shipping Russian oil, India expects its flows of crude from Russia not to be disrupted until March as the sanctioned tankers will be allowed to discharge until then, a senior Indian government official told Reuters on Monday.
Russia has formed a new government commission to coordinate clean up of the biggest spill of oil products in the Black Sea in recent history as the Kremlin continues to assess the full scale of the catastrophe.
Russia’s oil proceeds to the state budget increased by almost a third last year to the highest since at least 2018, spurred by higher crude prices as the nation adapted to international sanctions.