Will the EU oil embargo even hit Russia?

If you look at the current export flows of Russian oil, you may have doubts.

In April, the second month of the war of aggression against Ukraine, when a number of Western traders were no longer buying oil from Russia and the US and Great Britain had decided on an embargo, Russia was nevertheless shipping more oil every day than the average for the past year.

Most of the tankers went to Asia - where the oil was sold at huge discounts, but still at a price more than comfortable for the Russian state budget.

Henrik Ankenbrand

Economic correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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Christopher Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.

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Catherine Wagner

Business correspondent for Russia and the CIS based in Moscow.

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India in particular jumped in as a buyer: Both the domestic heat and energy crisis and cheap Russian oil played their part in this.

Traditionally, the world's third-largest oil buyer primarily buys weapons in Moscow;

oil imports tend to rank below also ran.

But that changed in April because energy demand rose and Russia offered its oil at cheap prices.

According to a report by the rating agency Standard & Poor's, in April India "became the largest buyer of Russian Urals crude oil," which was "lured with deep discounts as several regular European customers boycotted this oil following Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

Around a quarter of all Russian exports were shipped to Asia's third largest economy in April.

As the most widely used Russian variety, Urals oil is a benchmark in the global oil business.

Russian oil discounts are currently up to $40 a barrel compared to the global Brent price index.

But with world market prices of more than $100 per barrel of Brent oil, this is not a problem for Russia: an oil price of around $45 is considered sufficient to keep the state budget in balance.

Not all shipowners are ready

The Indian Ministry of Energy had to react to the worldwide criticism of the purchases: India has an enormous energy requirement and therefore buys oil "from every supplier in the world." Moscow finds this convenient.

Although the West is tightening sanctions, it may bring even more oil onto the world market than before the war.

However, the oil expert Adi Imsirovic from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies points out to the FAZ that the tanker data does not make it clear whether Russia actually exported more Russian oil in April - since Kazakh oil is also included in the figures .

In addition, not all oil that is sent by tanker is sold.

Some of the tankers went as far as the Caribbean, where oil is often stored or loaded.

Russia produced about 10.5 million barrels a day of crude oil and oil products last year and exported nearly 7 million barrels a day, accounting for about 13 percent of world oil trade.

According to S&P, before the start of the attack on Ukraine, European countries were importing 2.7 million barrels of crude oil and 1.5 million barrels of oil products, especially diesel, from Russia a day - more than half of Russia's total exports.