Russia is exporting oil in circumvention of sanctions with the help of a small port in Egypt: tankers unload Urals oil at the El Hamra terminal, hiding the origin of the raw material and its destination. Bloomberg writes about this, citing ship tracking data.
According to the agency, the Crested tanker with a cargo volume of about 700,000 barrels of oil was delivered to the Egyptian terminal at least once, on July 24. After that, the ship Chris took part of the Russian oil from the port and mixed it with the Egyptian oil. On July 28, Chris, according to tracking data, left the terminal almost full.
Now the tanker is moored at another Egyptian oil terminal – Ras Shuheir in the Red Sea, where the oil is also likely to be mixed with local oil. The agency clarifies that Russian oil supplies are becoming more hidden as European buyers began avoiding them after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Al Hamra terminal, operated by Egyptian Western Desert Operating Petroleum Co., has six storage tanks capable of holding 1.5 million barrels of crude oil and one buoy for loading and unloading. It was built for crude oil produced in Egypt, allowing Russia to dilute its oil with local oil. The terminal owner did not return calls to comment on the situation.
Egypt is already being used by Russia as a transit route for fuel oil, the newspaper emphasizes.
At the end of July, it became known that Egypt had canceled contracts for the purchase of 240,000 tons of Ukrainian grain. Reuters, citing sources, claimed that four shipments of grain did not have time to be loaded due to the outbreak of hostilities, the grain was supposed to be delivered in February and March. At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Cairo the day before.
Despite all the EU sanctions against Russia, including the embargo on oil imports by sea, the Russian Federation was able to quickly earn on this, at least in foreign currency, The Insider wrote . China increased its imports of Russian oil by 55% compared to the previous year, making Russia China's largest oil supplier. The Russian Federation is also redistributing flows and wants to use the export opportunities of its Caspian ports. At the same time, Russia is forced to compete in Asian markets with its political allies – Iran and Venezuela, which have reduced their shares in China and India because of it. The reduction in revenues, an important source of which is the Asian market, threatens the Russian authorities with serious problems, since since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the dependence of the budget on oil and gas revenues has jumped to 40%.