MOSCOW (Reuters) – Buyers of Russian oil have faced difficulties over payments and availability of vessels after imposition of Western sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine, traders said on Monday, while BP Plc has cancelled fuel oil loadings from a Black Sea port.
The West has introduced wide-range sweeping sanctions, including on the banking sector, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Thursday. Russia calls its action a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine.
The sanctions quagmire was further underscored by Russian oil producer Surgutneftegaz, who did not award its spot tender for 200,000 tonnes of Urals oil from Baltic ports in March as the company received no bids from buyers.
The United States and its allies on Saturday moved to block certain Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system.
“It’s possible to charter oil tankers for Black Sea exports, but rates are as high as 500 Worldscale points,” a source involved in Russian oil trading said about a unified system of establishing payment of freight rate.
The vast Russian energy sector itself has not been hit by the sanctions. Russia produces 10% of global oil and supplies 40% of Europe’s gas.
Traders said Russian oil buyers had struggled to find vessels in the Baltic Sea for cargoes loading after March 10, while they also reported that freight costs for Russian oil delivery had spiked fivefold in the Black Sea region within a week.
“We have ships for the closest dates, but we have no clue how we will load cargoes in mid-March,” said a source at a large buyer of Russian Urals oil.
At the same time, BP has cancelled all of its fuel oil loadings from the Russian Black Sea port of Taman due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sources familiar with the matter said.
BP was due to load a 60,000-tonne cargo of fuel oil on March 5, according to the sources and a loading list for the port. The cargo was cancelled even though a tanker was found to load the oil.
(Reporting by Julia Payne and Moscow Newsroom; Editing by Peter Graff, David Goodman and Jonathan Oatis)
