Top “peacemakers”: Turkey – 2nd in sea imports of Russian bloody crude oil in May 2024 and absolute world champion in sea imports of Russian petroleum products.
Andrii Klymenko investigates.
In May 2024, Turkey imported – according to our own monitoring – 2.5 million tons of crude oil: from Russian ports of the Baltic Sea (2.1 million tons) and the Black Sea (0.4 million tons). This accounts for 17.3% of the total crude oil exports from the ports of these two seas.
In total, 19 out of 100 tankers with crude oil from the Baltic and 4 out of 29 tankers from the Black Sea arrived in Turkey.
To estimate this in monetary terms, you can do the following simple arithmetic: 2.4 million tons * 7.3 = 17.52 million barrels * $79.58 = $1.4 billion USD (per month).
However, that is not all – unlike India, Turkey is the absolute champion in the sea import of Russian petroleum products (in addition to crude oil – diesel fuel, etc.).
In May 2024, Turkey imported – according to our own monitoring – 2.3 million tons of petroleum products from Russian ports of the Baltic Sea (0.7 million tons) and the Black Sea (1.6 million tons). This represents 37.7% of the total export of petroleum products from Russian ports in these two seas.
The number of tankers with Russian petroleum products received by Turkish ports in May 2024 might shock an unprepared reader: 83 from the Black Sea and 16 from the Baltic. Out of these 99 tankers, 35 were Russian.
By the way, after the start of the Great War, Turkey doubled its average monthly import figures in 2022, and then even tripled or quadrupled them. And now not only oil market specialists are asking the rhetorical question: did the use of low-quality Russian diesel fuel triple in Turkey? Or is it something else?
Let’s add another topic that raises many questions.
For a year now, since July 2023, Turkey has been pushing for the resumption of the “Black Sea Grain Initiative” (the same one – with the participation of the UN, Russia, and Turkey, from which Russia demonstratively withdrew), although an alternative has been successfully operating all this time – the Ukrainian sea export corridor (without the UN, without Russia, and without Turkey).
Why the Turkish president needs this, no one can understand. It remains to be assumed that:
a) the Turkish leader knows something about Russia’s plans to attack ships heading to the ports of Greater Odesa via the Ukrainian corridor, or
b) he is fulfilling the request of Emperor Pu, who certainly does not like that ships on their way to Ukrainian ports are no longer inspected.
Yes, we appreciate that Turkey has closed its straits to Russian warships. And we haven’t forgotten about the Bayraktars. But…
As we noted a few days ago – ALL “peacemaker” countries – those that exist and those that will appear – simply have business with Putin’s Russia. And they are not concerned about peace. They are concerned about their banks already feeling the strain – otherwise, soon they will have to somehow wind down their business with the aggressor country.
Tags: imports od russian crude oil oil embargo russia ukraine war sanctions sanctions against russia
