Roma – The roof at price of Russian oil decided byEuropean Union may have arrived late. Bruxelles just announced that it has put a cap on purchases of crude oil the company’s subsidiaries have Mosca, public and private: no more than 60 dollars per barrel. This is in addition to the import embargo all over Europe (with the exception of theHungary landlocked), which will start on Monday 5 December.
The goal is to control prices (for example by promoting the recovery of the most economically fragile countries), but above all to put the economy of the Kremlin to subtract from Vladimir Putin financial resources that would not thus be invested in the invasion ofUkraine. But Russia has not been watching. Just as it did for the cut in gas imports by the EU, it has also studied its countermoves for oil.
As reported by the Financial Times, Moscow has organized a “shadow” fleet of over 100 ships with which to get organized to get around the embargo. The British newspaper quotes the energy consultancy firm Rystadaccording to which Russia added 103 tankers in 2022 thanks to purchases and the reallocation of vessels that served Iran and Venezuela, two countries – not acso – under a Western oil embargo.
After all, the Western authorities have already been monitoring the Kremlin’s moves to get around the embargo obstacle for months. As reported on several occasions by the international press: last May, a series of articles and surveys by the Anglo-Saxon press also described in detail the tricks of Russian producers to arrive more easily in European ports where landings have always been carefully controlled. And also avoid being traced by the computers of the US banking authorities, given that the oil market is based almost exclusively on the dollar.
Just as the way in which Russian tankers with “false flags” met in the vast oceans for the transfer of oil cargo to larger ships was told.
So as to mix it with crude oil with similar characteristics but from other sources. Why to be considered Russian – as revealed by the Wall Street Journal – the big ones Oil company they think it should have at least the 51% of crude oil from Moscow companies. The trick is to stay below and declare where the majority share comes from.
In this way, the Russian companies try to sell their oil anyway in European ports but also in Japan and Australia. An attempt that will only be minimally successful. Take the case of the European Union, where its member states are reorganising. In anticipation of the embargo, crude oil flows have already redirected: again according to the IEA, oil imports in the EU have dropped to 1.4 million barrels a day, from 2.5 million last January. L’European Union satisfied your question targeting producers in the Middle East, West Africa, Brazil and Guyana.
While United States and Kazakhstan they promised a increase in shipments after December 5 for more than one million barrels a day to compensate for the Russian crude that will no longer arrive. And, as happened with gas after the invasion of Ukraine, Norway has returned to ramping up production, where state giant Equinor has announced it has accelerated development of “Johan Sverdrup” (named after an early minister at the end of the 19th century), the largest deposit in Western Europe in the North Sea.
But, at the same time, Russian producers have been looking for and finding alternative customers. Imports from India, China and Turkey rose to at least 1.2 million barrels per day already at the end of the summer. And the “shadow” fleet serves just that purpose.