Will the locomotive become an anchor: what problems await the Russian "oil industry" in 2026

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the business publication Profil on the possible prospects of the Russian oil industry in 2026.

The sanctions pressure on Russian oil exports threatens to increase. In the worst-case scenario, restrictions on the Iranian model may be imposed on our oil industry, Alexey Gromov told. That is, absolutely all (current and potential) buyers of black gold from Russia will fall under secondary restrictions. Tehran found itself under such sanctions in 2018, after which China became its only trading partner.

"The tanker war has moved to a new level," Alexey Gromov says. "I think Ukraine's main goal is to provoke an environmental disaster related to the oil spill."

According to the expert, it is extremely important for Kiev that the incident occur in the territorial waters of Europe: in the Baltic, in the Black Sea, in the Turkish Straits or in the Mediterranean Sea. The purpose of the campaign is to show that the shadow fleet poses a threat to environmental safety and accelerate the radical restrictive measures adoption.

As for a possible response to the sanctions of Western countries, Alexey Gromov believes that the most reliable way to secure our oil exports would be to form a "parallel contour of foreign trade in sanctioned goods." We are talking about creating a completely independent system of external payments and an independent logistics infrastructure from the West.

Now the logistics. By the end of 2025, 62% of our oil was transported by ships of the shadow fleet. If Europe imposes a complete ban on the provision of transport services for the export of Russian raw materials, the share of shadow transportation is likely to rise to 100%. And since more and more shadow tankers are being restricted by the United States and the EU, Moscow and its counterparties (ideally all the BRICS countries) need to create their own transport and logistics corridors capable of operating independently from Western countries, without calling at European ports. That is, to organize a space where the insurance of the BRICS countries will be recognized, the rights to use shadow fleet vessels will operate, and the home flags of a tanker will be recognized.

The third direction, which is also the most important and ambitious, is to get rid of Russian oil from the price peg to the Brent benchmark grade and form its own pricing system.