Page 13 - RusRPTApr23

curbs. The data includes shipments to “unknown” destinations and ship-to-ship transfers.
While Asia played the leading role as a new market for Russian crude exports in 2022, Africa is emerging as a top buyer of oil in 2023. Amongst the biggest buyers of Russian oil so far this year were Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Ghana and Egypt, which have all doubled their Russian fuel imports to around 440,000 b/d, S&P said. Russia's share of European oil product imports
data.
“Elsewhere, Turkey, the
UAE and China consolidated their top-ranking positions as Russia's new biggest
fuel buyers, the data shows, with 35% of all Russian oil products now headed to
those countries,” S&P said. “Despite the slump in Russian oil product
exports in February, the levels seen are largely in line with product exports during mid-2022 before markets began stockpiling discounted Russian fuels ahead
of the expected new Western curbs.” "The sharp decline in Russian
gasoil headed to Europe has been blunted somewhat by the continued increase in volumes going to Europe from the Middle East and Asia," S&P Global Commodities Insights analyst Tony Starkey said in a February 17 note. "While the Russian drop in the month was expected with the implementation of the new European sanctioning, it has largely resulted in total diesel/gasoil import volumes returning to more normal levels seen before we observed significant inflows over the past several months aimed to bolster European inventories ahead of the anticipated loss of Russian supply." Russian seaborne crude exports remained resilient in February, dipping back from an eight-month high a month earlier, the data shows, as Moscow redirected record volumes of its crude to India and a growing grey market in offshore transfers obscured other buyers.
Russian-origin crude loadings averaged 3.31mn b/d during February, down 300,000 b/d or 8% from January levels to hover around the highest since August 2022 and still above pre-war levels of 3.1mn b/d.
Despite the G7's $60/b price cap on Russian crude, the value of Russia's key Urals export-grade crude has traded well below $60 since December, easing concerns from traders and shippers that the shipping controls would hamper Russian crude flows.
“Next month could see Russia's crude exports slide more sharply, however,” S&P opined. “To date, the restrictions had not had a major impact on Russian crude oil production volumes. Russian output fell 10,000 b/d on the month to 9.85mn b/d in January, according to the latest Platts survey by S&P Global
-- including
STS transfer volumes -- fell to just 7.5% in February, down from pre-war levels
of 39%, according to the
13 RUSSIA Country Report Russia April 2023 www.intellinews.com