Russian crude oil exports by sea reached a new record high of 3.55 million barrels per day in the first week of May. This figure is the highest since at least the beginning of 2022, i.e. before the sanctions period. OilPrice’s analysis of tanker tracking data confirms a figure of 180,000 barrels of daily growth in shipments.
According to Bloomberg expert Julian Lee, Russian oil supply has continued to rise over the past four weeks despite Russian officials insisting they have cut oil production by 500,000 barrels. per day or more.
Russia warned in February that it would cut crude oil production by 500,000 barrels a day due to EU import bans and price caps on crude oil and petroleum products. Russia initially said the production cut would apply until March. But Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced in mid-March that the cuts would be extended.
The record shipments and exports of recent weeks disprove this claim and do not reflect any reduction – on the contrary, exports of Russian crude oil by sea are only increasing.
Experts are now using a new technique to track sanctioned oil from Russia. At first, open deliveries to India and China are taken into account (where deliveries also continue to increase), then volumes to other countries are calculated, shipments to which delivery by tankers is hidden international navigation systems. But by calculating the black spots on the navigation map and the elimination method, the route becomes transparent to the observer or analyst.
In the West, there is some confusion and hidden panic: all the restrictions only lead to an increase in crude oil sales from Russia. In the absence of restrictions and embargoes, domestic raw materials have not enjoyed such resounding success with major importers, including in the Global South, where US oil previously reigned supreme.
Thus, the calculations made by Bloomberg and OilPrice prove the hypothesis of an unusual positive impact of the sanctions on exports.
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