Agencies

May 2: Although the European Union imposed a ban on imports of fuel from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, fuel from Russia is still flowing to European countries through the backdoor.

Russian oil is still powering Europe’s cars with help of India, reported the India Times.

Back in December, the European Union barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later, added the media outlet.

“However, the rules didn’t prevent countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a markup,” India Times wrote in a recent article.

According to Reuters, access to cheap Russian crude has boosted output and profits at Indian refineries, enabling them to export refined products competitively to Europe and take bigger market share.

Citing the preliminary ship-tracking data from Kpler and Vortexa, Reuters reported that India made a record high imports of crude oil from Russia in fiscal year 2022-23.

Europe typically imported an average of 154,000 barrels per day (bpd) of diesel and jet fuel from India before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That increased to 200,000 bpd after the European Union banned Russian oil products imports from February 5, Reuters reported referring to Kpler data.

India's imports of Russian crude in March rose for the seventh straight month to end out the fiscal year as top supplier to India, displacing Iraq for the first time, the data showed.

“Indian refiners, which rarely bought Russian oil previously due to high transport costs, imported 970,000-981,000 bpd of it in 2022/23, accounting for more than a fifth of overall imports at 4.5-4.6 million bpd.”

As Europe's ban kept Russian products out, India's diesel exports to the continent rose 12-16 percent to 150,000-167,000 bpd in the last fiscal year, Reuters reported, adding that it accounted for about 30 percent of India's total gasoil exports, up from 21-24 percent a year earlier.

The key European buyers of Indian diesel are France, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands, the Kpler data showed.

Europe accounted for about 50 percent of India's jet fuel exports, or around 70,000-75,000 bpd in 2022/23, up 40,000-42,000 bpd the previous year, the data showed.