Russian oil shipments decreased due to UAV attacks on the Baltic Sea ports

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Business FM on the reduction in shipments of Russian oil through the Baltic ports.

— Supplies of oil and petroleum products have declined repeatedly, they have been quite volatile over the past three years. But if the decrease is solely due to a temporary reduction in the capacity of the port infrastructure, then after some time the volume of supplies will recover, that is, this is a temporary phenomenon, and I think it should be treated that way. And from the point of view of the sustainability of Russian production, there is a margin of safety in order to temporarily reduce production or redirect volumes to processing. Although processing is also difficult. As it is, there have been practically no strategic oil storage facilities of sufficient volume in Russia lately, the issue has been discussed for a long time, whether they are needed or not, it is expensive, there is nowhere to store oil, everything extracted must be either processed or exported. If the shutdown lasts for weeks, it will lead to a temporary decrease in production, but this is not critical. Rather, in response to the global market, a moderate price increase is possible against the background of a reduction in exports from Russia. Our main Russian Urals variety is exported through the Baltic ports, and it is now going to India.

— If there are temporary problems, won't India suffer too much?

— India has a fairly diversified structure, it can replace supplies, especially if we are talking about a short time period, there is Iraqi oil, which is close to Russian oil in terms of cost and characteristics, in addition, there are reserves at refineries.