Why Russia is winning in the American oil products market

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy Studies of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented on the Internet portal Pravda.ru about the record deliveries of Russian oil and petroleum products to the American fuel market.

Russia’s record for the export of petroleum products to the USA 

Russian oil and petroleum products remain a highly demanded and highly competitive commodity even in the context of an energy and geopolitical confrontation with the West.

According to the data from the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy (EIA), at the end of 2020 the United States increased imports of Russian oil and petroleum products to a maximum since 2011.The volume of purchases amounted to 538 thousand barrels per day and for the year increased by 3.5% - up to 7% of total purchases. Russia has become the second largest exporter of oil and petrochemical products to the United States, displacing Saudi Arabia from this position.

In a commentary to Pravda.Ru, Aleksey Gromov, explained the record deliveries by the fact that Russian oil in terms of its quality matches the American refining capacities as closely as possible and even more so than shale oil produced in the United States.

“In addition, in 2020, just the production of shale oil in the United States was experiencing a serious crisis,” the expert noted, “and the combination of these two factors led to the fact that the United States, focusing exclusively on the logic of the economy and healthy competition, bought a record since 2011 volumes of Russian oil and petrochemicals”.

He stressed that Russian oil products are very competitive in the market, and diesel fuel and other middle distillates are used by Western companies as feedstock for production of higher quality oil products.

"This is a market situation in which we have once again proved that Russian hydrocarbons, in particular oil and oil products, remain a very popular and highly competitive commodity even in the face of an energy geopolitical confrontation between Russia and its Western partners," Alexey Gromov said.

Should we impose sanctions on the petroleum products supply to the United States?

According to the expert, it is short-sighted on our part that this Russian export to the United States "will be brought to the same plane with sanctions," since "our partners are waiting for this."

"That is, they provoke an aggravation of the conflict. We are acting on the basis of a healthy pragmatic market logic: we are systematically implementing the Nord Stream 2 project, supplying natural gas under long-term contracts to European countries," Alexey Gromov said.

According to him, this is the best position that the Russian Federation could choose today.