Russia has long been a major supplier of refined intermediates and finished products to Europe, as it has been of crude oil. This changed, however, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as the European Union (EU) implemented a formal embargo on imports of Russian crude oil in December 2022, followed by refined products in February of 2023. In today’s RBN blog, we review the reduction in imports of Russian refined intermediates and products to Europe and the specific sources of replacement.
As we described in Part 1 of this series, Russia supplied about 25% of all crude oil and refined products to Europe and accounted for about 38% of EU imports before the embargo. The total volume was about 4.7 MMb/d, of which crude oil comprised more than 3 MMb/d. Total refined products supplied by Russia to Europe was about 1.5-1.6 Mb/d before February 2023, when the volume decreased to less than 500 Mb/d (multi-colored bar at the end right in Figure 1).
The EU ban on Russian refined products came into effect on 5 February 2023, leading to significant reductions in diesel/diesel, fuel oil/refinery feedstocks and naphtha/gasoline. Diesel and gasoil (dark green bar segments) accounted for about half of Russian refined products imported by the EU at just under 800 Mb/d in 2021 and 2022, declining to 264 Mb/d in February -March 2023 (the time period represents 40 days after the embargo comes into force). Fuel oil and refinery feedstocks (yellow segments) had been trending in the 400-500 Mb/d range before falling to 153 Mb/d. Finally, naphtha and gasoline (blue segments) decreased from 310 Mb/d to 65 Mb/d.
