Shouting sanctions and bans to evade tracking privately, Europe "deceived the sky" to buy Russian oil!

　　[Global Times correspondent in Russia and Germany, Li Linjia, Aoki and Liu Yupeng] While the EU plans to further strengthen its energy ban on Russia, Russia's oil exports to EU countries continue to rebound.

The US "Wall Street Journal" reported on the 22nd that in recent weeks, Russia has increased oil transportation to its main customer, the European Union. Since April, Russian oil imports from the Netherlands, Greece and other countries have soared.

The Wall Street Journal said an "opaque market" was forming.

Oil from Russian ports is increasingly being shipped to "unknown destinations".

German media believes that Europe's real demand for energy has forced it to continue to buy Russian oil in large quantities, and trade traders are using an ancient method to "pass the sea" to European ports.

European imports doubled

　　Oil exports from Russian ports to EU member states have risen to an average of 1.6 million bpd so far in April, compared with an average of 1.3 million bpd in March, according to tanker tracker TankerTrackers.

Data from Kpler, another commodity data analytics firm, showed a similar trend.

According to the Wall Street Journal, more and more oil is being sent from Russian ports.

European countries desperately need oil to keep their economies afloat and prevent fuel prices from pushing up inflation data that has already topped all-time highs.

But Western energy companies and oil middlemen want to "deal quietly" and avoid sanctions and criticism.

　　Traders said the average price of a barrel of Russian oil was $20-30 below the Brent benchmark.

Giovanni Stanovo, a commodities analyst at UBS Group, said the deep discounts on Russian oil currently on the market make it very attractive to buyers.

Among European buyers of Russian oil, Romania, Estonia, Greece and Bulgaria more than doubled their April imports of Russian oil from the March average to more than 100,000 bpd.

　　The Netherlands, the biggest recent buyer of Russian oil, saw the most dramatic surge in oil imports, rising to about 650,000 barrels a day from an average of about 500,000 barrels a day last month.

Some buyers are rushing to get their business done to circumvent possible new restrictions.

In recent weeks, a number of multinational oil majors and commodity trading firms have chartered ships to transport crude from Russian oil export terminals in the Black and Baltic Seas to EU ports, including Royal Dutch Shell, U.S. Exxon Mobil, Spain’s Repso Company, etc.

Ship-tracking data showed that oil cargoes carried by the ships arrived in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands this month.

Switzerland's "Glimpse" said that Swiss commodity traders are also involved in the sale of Russian oil.

According to a report by the Swiss embassy in Moscow, 80 percent of Russian commodities are traded through Switzerland.

'Ancient way' to evade sanctions

　　"How does the West secretly buy Russian oil?" Germany's "Manager Magazine" reported on the 23rd that traders are using an ancient method to transport Russian oil to European ports.

　　More and more oil is being shipped from Russian ports to "unknown destinations," according to data from Maritime Analytics.

As of April, more than 11.1 million barrels of oil had been loaded onto tankers with no scheduled routes.

　　Analysts and traders said the use of the "unknown destination" tag often meant that the ship's oil was transferred at sea to larger tankers.

Russian crude is blended here with crude from other sources, an "old practice of evading sanctions" that has been used for oil exports from sanctioned countries such as Iran and Venezuela.

　　A tanker off the coast of Gibraltar in mid-April took over three shipments of oil from vessels departing from Russia's Baltic ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, the report said.

Vessel tracking data shows the tanker set sail from South Korea and is now headed to the port of Rotterdam.

　　Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Russian National Energy Security Fund, described the "grey" plan for European buyers to deliver Russian oil: First, a tanker in the Baltic Sea would turn off its transponder and head to a port in northern Russia, where it would be loaded with Russian oil After going to sea.

The tanker will then sail to a larger tanker waiting on the high seas to reload Russian oil through a sea loading operation (pictured left).

Next, the tanker turned on the transponder and reappeared on the radar.

No one can determine the amount of Russian oil delivered in this way because websites that track tankers cannot track movements.

　　By doing this, tankers mix Russian oil with other oil.

According to Shell, if Russia's oil is mixed with other countries' oil at a ratio of 49% to 51%, the new oil cargo becomes "Latvian blend", "Turkmen blend" or any other oil blend, It can hardly be proved that this is Russian oil any more.

　　Formally, Yushkov said, the plan is completely legal.

Once the EU decides to impose an oil embargo on Russia, such "Iran-style" shipments will be a way for Russian oil to circumvent Western sanctions.

Can't afford higher energy costs

　　According to professionals familiar with crude oil transportation in Hamburg, Germany, for many years Russian oil has generally been transported to Europe by tankers. The main route is the route from the Baltic Sea port to the Port of Hamburg and the Port of Rotterdam, where the “grey” plan has concentrated recently. Western European oil refining centers are mostly concentrated in the above two areas. land.

The tankers can each carry about 600,000 barrels of oil and travel back and forth for about two weeks.

Although the EU has not imposed an oil embargo on Russia, due to the pressure of sanctions, some countries have begun to implement partial embargoes, or prohibit Russian ships from docking, etc., resulting in oil tankers having to “transport on the curve”.

　　In Europe, while shouting sanctions against Russian energy, while buying Russian oil through various "grey" plans, there is economic pressure in the face of inflation data continuously rising above historical extremes.

Prices of goods and services in the euro zone hit an all-time high in March due to a surge in energy prices caused by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Eurostat said.

Last week, Eurostat revised its previous estimate of consumer price inflation in March to 7.4 percent year-on-year in its final assessment.

That's well above the 2% previously set by the ECB, compared with 5.9% year-on-year inflation in February.

Among them, energy prices rose by 44.7% year-on-year, which was the main reason for the inflation data in April.

　　In terms of countries, Germany's March inflation rate rose to 7.3%, the highest since the reunification of the two countries in 1990; while France's March consumer price index rose 4.5% year-on-year and 1.4% month-on-month, the highest since December 1985. The largest year-on-year increase.

In the non-EU country Britain, inflation hit 7% in March, the highest level in 30 years.