Drones versus oil: will Russian exports stop

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented on the possible consequences of terrorist attacks against the Russian "shadow fleet" tankers to Forbes.

Attacks on Russian ships will not stop Russia's use of tankers, which there are now more than a thousand, Alexei Gromov believes.

According to him, the reduction in Russian exports is influenced not so much by sanctions and drone attacks as by financial and logistical issues. There are difficulties with shipping oil to end customers, Gromov says. But this does not mean that they refuse Russian supplies. Similar problems were observed earlier, in 2022-2025: with Sakhalin oil, and at some point with Turkish buyers, he recalls.

"China had a task to fill the strategic oil reserve, and it did. Independent Chinese refineries have already chosen the import quota that the government has allocated to them for this year," the analyst explains.

India's situation is slightly different, they demonstrate a commitment to supply diversification, the expert adds. In his opinion, New Delhi will generally keep supplies from Russia, reducing them slightly. So shipments to customers in China, India or Turkey will improve as the formalities are resolved, Gromov believes.

But the price for maintaining volumes, of course, will be a discount, that is, the difference between the price of Russian Urals oil and the benchmark Brent, Gromov points out.

"This is a really serious consequence of the sanctions. Throughout this year and until the end of October and the beginning of November, the discount on Russian oil remained in the range of $12-14 per barrel. As of November 25, the discount has increased to $19 per barrel," he says.

But the discounts will inevitably decrease. "According to the experience of previous restrictions, discounts increased in the first few months after the sanctions were imposed. We believe that even now they will remain at most until the end of February 2026, and then, as new logistics schemes and financial chains are being built, they will decrease," Gromov says.