Russian export of crude oil and petroleum products to Africa has increased by 2.6 times over the past two years, President Vladimir Putin has disclosed.
Putin said this while addressing African leaders and the business community at the just-ended Second Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg, Russia.
Although Mr. Putin did not provide details about the export, pieces of information gathered by this portal suggested that as of December 2022, Russia’s oil export to Africa was hovering at 214,000 barrels per day.
Before the war in Ukraine, Russia exported 33,000 bpd of refined products to Africa, much of it gasoline, S&P Global Commodity Insights reported.
And by March 2023, that had soared to 420,000 bpd.
Illustrating the geopolitics at play, shipments to Nigeria, Tunisia and Libya jumped sharply in February when the European Union placed an embargo on Russian products.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Energy Minister, Nikolay Shulginov, in an interview with TASS on the eve of the Russia-Africa summit, revealed that Russian companies started boosting deliveries to Africa in 2022.
“The issue is mainly about petroleum products. Russia supplied 200,000 tons of oil to Africa in January-May of this year, whereas in the same period last year, there were no supplies.
“Exports of petroleum products to the continent climbed three-fold in five months to almost eight million tons,” he said.
“As Russia increasingly builds transport, logistics and financial infrastructure regarding supplies, we expect positive dynamics to persist by the end of the year,” Shulginov added.
Earlier, Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia’s exports of oil to friendly countries soared by 76 per cent in 2022, and petroleum products by 20 per cent in annual terms. All in all, almost 40 million tons of oil and petroleum products were redirected from western to eastern markets last year, he said, adding that this year out of 223 million tons of oil and oil products exported in the western direction only 87 million tons, or 40 per cent were expected to remain.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com