China, India split almost all Russian oil and petroleum exports in 2023 as Europe took just about 5%

Russia has exported around 90 per cent of its crude oil to India and China in 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday. “Almost all of Russia’s oil exports this year have been shipped to China and India,” Novak said. Russia has been quickly rerouting supplies away from Europe to respond to Western economic sanctions imposed on it. “Russia has successfully circumvented sanctions on its oil and diverted flows from Europe to China and India, which together accounted for around 90 per cent of its crude exports,” Novak, who is in charge of the country’s energy sector, was quoted as saying by Rossiya-24 state TV. Novak further said Russia had already started to forge ties with Asia-Pacific countries before the West introduced sanctions against Moscow following the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022. “As for those restrictions and embargoes on supplies to Europe and the U.S. that were introduced… this only accelerated the process of reorienting our energy flows,” Novak said. He said that Europe’s share of Russia’s crude exports has fallen to only about 4-5 per cent from about 40-45 per cent. “The main partners in the current situation are China, whose share has grown to approximately 45-50 per cent, and, of course, India…Earlier, there basically were no supplies to India; in two years, the total share of supplies to India has come to 40 per cent,” Novak said. Speaking about the OPEC+ group of leading oil producers, Novak said Russia was sticking to its obligations on supply cuts and it saw the Brent oil price at $80-$85 per barrel next year, broadly in line with current levels. The United States last month also declared sanctions against Arctic LNG 2, a liquefied natural gas project led by Russian company Novatek (NVTK.MM). Fearing a backlash from the sanctions, foreign shareholders suspended participation in the project, renouncing their responsibilities for financing and for offtake contracts for the plant, the daily Kommersant reported on Monday. Sanctions also resulted in Novatek declaring force majeure over LNG supplies from the project, industry sources told Reuters last week. Novak said the project’s first train has effectively already started producing LNG with the first supplies expected in the first quarter of 2024. Industry sources said the train had produced the “first drops” of LNG, but it will be some time before it reaches its nameplate capacity of 6.6 million metric tons per year. With inputs from Reuters