From Monday, the more a drop of black gold from Russia will not be admitted on European soil by sea. OPEC + countries maintained the status quota on Sunday on Sunday.
Strike Moscow to the wallet without undergoing too much social backlash. This is one of the challenges of the European Union since the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine in late February. Last measurement, the Russian crude oil embargo comes into force on Monday, December 5, in order to dry up a source of war financing. To date, the more a drop of black gold from Russia will not be admitted on European soil, at least by sea. A first salvo which should be followed on February 5, 2023 by new sanctions, this time on processed petroleum products, notably diesel.
“It is a difficult mission for Europe but not impossible,” said Francis Perrin, director of research at IRIS in Paris, who adds that the twenty-seven have been preparing for it since the spring. “The movement to lower Russian oil exports is already at work,” he recalls. Evidenced by their fall by 40 %, for crude oil, between the start of the invasion in Ukraine at the end of February and the month of October, and 20 to 25 % on refined products alone.
Thus, in October, the EU already matched only 1.4 million barrels of Russian crude oil per day, including a marginal part (0.3 million) transit by pipeline via Hungary and will therefore not be not concerned by the sanctions. To this crude oil are added about a million refined petroleum products. “In the short term, Europe can find solutions,” said Carmine de Franco, research manager at Ossiam, quoting the Middle East, the United States, Norway and Africa to the rank of other regions of substitution for supply. “On the other hand, it will be more difficult for diesel, because the EU still matters a lot and there is little production capacity of refined products,” he warns. Many experts expect greater tensions on diesel even if the European Union has taken this data and tables on new refining capacities at the end of this year and in 2023.
countries have already become larger actors in the export of diesel to Europe. “We actually observe a transfer of the value of Russian exports to emerging countries which buy with large discounts of volumes, refine them, and make margins by exporting them to Europe”, confirms Marc-Antoine El-Mazzega, Director of the Energy and Climate Center of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). Since February, India has thus doubled its sales to the Old Continent, even if this phenomenon remains to be put into perspective with regard to the entire global market and the internal needs of the subcontinent. For its part, Turkey also exports more and more refined products from Russian crude.
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