Saturday, August 06, 2022

Is Russia Selling Its Oil To The World Through An Obscure Egyptian Port?

Ian Thorpe, 6 August 2022

While there is little that is believable in the reports coming out of Ukraine from both sides engaged in the conflict, with Russia saying nothing while western media propaganda continues to talk up Ukrainian successes along the lines of "Ukraine is winning, the Russian army is being pushed back, Putin has been humiliated and his military campaign is in disarray, oops another major Ukrainian city / stronghold has fallen to the Russians .... but Ukraine is still winning. In the meantime of course, while Ukrainian civilians suffer ans their country is reduced to rubble, in what was always America's latest proxy war with the east, in the economic war Russia is ahead by a distance.

As this blog predicted when NATO and EU member states shot themselves in the foot by reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine with sanctions that prevented Russia from selling oil, gas and vital raw materials to the countries that needed them most, the NATO and EU member states, the Russians have had no problems finding alternative customers for their gas and oil and no problem getting oil into the world's commodity markets through the back door.

Despite the sanctions that were put in place as a result of the country's conflict in Ukraine the Russian economy is prospering while the sanctioning nations are facing crises of energy supply, food shortage and runaway inflation.

The loophole Russia is exploiting to sell its oil is by trans - shipping tanker cargoes on Egypt’s El Hamra oil terminal, where about 700,000 barrels of oil were delivered on July 24. Another vessel then came into port and collected a cargo of crude oil, which may have included some or all the Russian oil, according to Bloomberg.

The final destination of the oil is "hard to track," especially if it has been blended with oil from other sources. Egypt’s Western Desert Operating Petroleum Co. operates the port, which has 6 storage tanks capable of handling the quantities of oil involved. 


Picture: Zero Hedge

The Bloomberg report continues, "Once the first tanker left, a second arrived, the report said. When the second tanker left on July 28, its cargo tanks were almost full and it is moored at the Ras Shukheir oil terminal on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. 

The El Hamra port was originally build to handle crude that was produced in Egypt’s western desert. The available facilities create possibilities to mix Russian oil with local volumes and make it harder to track. 

Tankers carrying Russian crude oil have previously conducted ship to ship transfers off the Spanish north African city of Ceuta and, more recently, in the mid-Atlantic, Bloomberg noted.It all seems a higly unlikely way of transporting and offloading a legitimate cargo and must increase transportation costs at a time when Corporate Finance Officers are trying to shave every penny they can off costs.

But the more times the fuel is blended, transported or changes hands, the harder it is to track... So one could be forgiven for thinking there is something dodgy about the whole operation. In the end of course it is we poor taxpayers in the developed nations who take the untimate hit while everybody else gets richer.

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