Russian seaborne oil exports fall to two-month low - Bloomberg
Kyiv • UNN
Russia's maritime oil exports fell by 150,000 barrels per day by November 24. The largest decline occurred in Russia's western ports, where shipments fell by 25% compared to last month.
Russia's oil exports by sea fell by the most since July, with shipments dropping to a two-month low, amid a sharp decline in supplies to key buyer India, Bloomberg reports, UNN writes.
Details
Four-week average supply volumes fell by about 150,000 barrels per day in the period through November 24, dropping for the fourth time in five weeks, even though exports were up slightly on a weekly basis compared to the previous seven days.
According to ship tracking data and reports from port agents, 27 tankers loaded 20.5 million barrels of Russian crude oil in the week to November 24. The volume was slightly up from 19.8 million barrels on 26 vessels the previous week.
The decline is said to have been mainly in Russia's western ports, where shipments over the past two weeks have been down about 25% compared to last month's average. In the last week, a five-day break in the loading program for Novorossiysk, reportedly likely due to maintenance, hit the Black Sea cargo figures.
As most cargoes from export terminals in the west were headed for India, the drop in average shipments over the four weeks from the Arctic, Baltic and Black Seas was reflected in a reduction in the amount of oil heading to the South Asian country. The first figures indicate that deliveries in the period up to November 24 were below 1 million barrels per day. Although this figure will increase as data on offloading ports becomes clearer, it will still be at least 500,000 barrels per day below the volume shipped in the four weeks to mid-October, the publication notes.
The reduction reportedly comes ahead of OPEC+ oil ministers' discussions on Sunday amid expectations that they will postpone their plan to start putting barrels back on the market for the third time. russia has promised to make deeper production cuts in October and November to offset past overproduction, and the decline in exports may partly reflect efforts to fulfill that promise, the newspaper writes. According to government data, last month's production was close to Russia's OPEC+ target.
Separately, the UK has added two more Russian insurance companies, AlfaStrakhovanie Group Plc and VSK, to its list of sanctioned entities, joining three other insurers. Four of these companies are now approved by the Indian government to provide P&I insurance for ships calling at the country's ports. London authorities have also added 30 more tankers to the list of vessels sanctioned for transporting Russian oil. Fourteen of them were already under sanctions by either the US or the EU.
