Reuters: the export of Russian oil products by sea increased by 17%

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave a comment to Business FM on the current dynamics of Russian oil product exports and Russian oil prices:

“There have not been such high volumes since March 2022. This is largely due to increased supplies to Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East. These are the three main growth areas. That is, the main flows go to countries with the shortest transport distance - to where it is closer to export oil in order to reduce the need for tankers, because there is a huge difference in the timing of transportation to Turkey and India. If the route to Turkey and back takes several days, then deliveries from Novorossiysk to India take one and a half to two months.

The export of Russian oil products is much more diversified: there are many countries to export, it is even difficult to single out a few dominant countries. This is a patchwork quilt that consists of different regions, a dozen different countries. And this is largely the stability of Russian exports of petroleum products, in that it depends little on demand in some individual countries. If for oil we have big risks associated primarily with the possibility of reducing imports from India, then for oil products the situation looks more favorable precisely because there are many buyers and you can maneuver between them, increase supplies to some regions, reduce - to others. The average price of Russian oil is a mystery to most observers, because a significant part of the transactions are in the shadows, the market has become extremely opaque, so it is difficult to say what the real average price is. We see that shipments in the ports of Primorsk and Novorossiysk are low. This is what the Russian Ministry of Finance publishes - average monthly prices are about $50 per barrel. They have not changed much since December, they fluctuate at about the same level - 48-50 dollars. In a destination port, for example in India, prices are much higher, $70 or more per barrel, in China even higher.”