The most important peacekeeper: India is the absolute champion in maritime imports of Russian bloody crude oil, Andrii Klymenko found out.
In May 2024, India imported – according to our own monitoring – 7.1 million tons of crude oil from Russian ports in the Baltic (5.7 million tons) and Black (1.4 million tons) Seas. This is 47.6% of the total volume of crude oil exports from the ports of these two seas.
That is, 49 out of 100 tankers with crude oil from the Baltic Sea and 10 out of 29 tankers from the Black Sea arrived in India.
In total, India bought half of all crude oil from the Baltic Sea ports and 40% from the Black Sea ports.
To estimate this in currency, we can do the following simple arithmetic: 7.1 million tons * 7.3 = 51.5 million barrels * $79.58 = $4.1 billion.
If you wish, you can deduct from this amount the freight rates for Suezmax tankers on this route – approximately $4.6 million per voyage. So 59 tankers * 4.6 = $271.4 million. Thus, Indian buyers paid Russia about $3.8 billion for crude oil in May 2024.
As we noted a few days ago, ALL “peacekeeping” countries – both existing and emerging – are simply doing business with Putin’s Russia. And they are not worried about peace. They are worried about the fact that their banks are already feeling it, otherwise they will soon have to wind down their business with the aggressor country.
