Six little-known traders provided more than half of Russian oil exports in December 2022, Bloomberg found out . Together, they handled 1.4 million barrels worth $2 billion, enough to make it into the league of the world's biggest commodities traders. At the same time, the stories of these companies are not particularly known, some of them do not even have websites, and their representatives do not communicate with journalists.
As the agency points out, this amount of oil is enough to satisfy all the needs of the UK or Italy, and it is more than what trading giants (Trafigura Group or Vitol Group) worked with before the war in Ukraine.
“The question of who controls the flow of Russian oil after major international traders cut ties with Moscow remains one of the biggest mysteries in the oil market,” Bloomberg points out.
The largest of the new traders was Hong Kong's Nord Axis, which is known to have bought Trafigura's stake in Vostok Oil. Almost nothing is known about another trader, Tejarinaft FZCO from Dubai. About the third company in terms of purchases - QR Trading DMCC - it is known that it works with Surgutneftegaz.
As Bloomberg notes, other traders have a more detailed history, but the companies do not respond to requests from journalists.
International sanctions have made the trade in Russian oil even more shadowy, it is now almost impossible to obtain reliable data on who is involved in it, the agency notes.
“Knowing the big names is an important step in understanding how oil markets are reacting to price caps and broader sanctions,” said Steve Chikala, one of the project leaders at the National Bureau of Economic Research.