According to The Guardian, data from the environmental news site Desmog shows that the UK imported £2.7bn worth of refined oil from India, China and Turkey in 2023, in line with the record amount bought in 2022 and up sharply from the £540m imported in 2021.
Russia is the biggest supplier of crude to India and China, while Turkey has become one of the largest importers of Russian oil since February 2022.
The UK banned outright imports of Russian oil products from 5 December 2022, as part of its sanctions on Russia. But a loophole in the law is allowing Russian oil to continue to flow into the UK.
As long as Russian oil has been refined in another country, it is no longer classed as being of Russian origin. The result is that Russian oil is being sold to allied nations to be processed, before being shipped to the UK.
Refined oil imports into the UK from India have increased substantially since the Ukraine war began. In 2021, the UK imported just under £500m of refined oil from India, but this rose to £2.2bn in 2022 and was running at a rate of £1.8bn in 2023.
Refined oil imports from China have increased more than 20-fold since 2021 – rising from £37m to £490m in 2022, and to £825m in 2023.
Meanwhile, the value of refined oil imports from Turkey has increased from £2.2m in 2021 to £75m in 2023. Turkey is now the third largest importer of Russian crude oil behind China and India.
Europe still imports large volumes of refined products from Russian oil.
Lela Stanley, senior investigator at Global Witness, said: “Millions of barrels of refined Russian oil products are continuing to flood into the UK. Last year alone they were worth over £125m to the Kremlin. Unless this loophole is closed, the UK will continue to line Putin’s war chest.”
Global Witness estimates that, over the whole of 2023, approximately 5.2m barrels of refined oil products made from Russian crude were imported into the UK, with jet fuel accounting for the largest share, at 4.6m barrels. Analysts estimate that Russian-linked fuel was used in one in 20 flights in the UK.
UK government figures show that direct imports of oil from Russia fell from £1.8bn in the first quarter of 2022 to zero a year later.
This has forced the UK to increase its imports of fossil fuels from other countries. It spent £24bn on oil and gas imports from Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the financial year to March 2023 – a 60% increase on the previous year.
In addition to buying fossil fuels from oil-producing nations, the UK and the EU have been buying refined Russian oil via India, China and Turkey.
Global Witness found that the EU imported 130m barrels from refineries processing Russian crude in 2023. The group estimates that these trades could be worth up to €1.3bn to the Kremlin.
Russia is now China’s largest supplier of crude oil, with trade volumes up by 24% in 2023 compared with the previous year.
The purchases by China and India have helped to steady the Russian economy, which contracted by just 2.1% in 2022 – significantly less than the 12% that had been predicted.
Russia is the top oil supplier to India, which now gets 40% of its oil imports from the country. It imported an average of 1.76m barrels of Russian oil a day between April and September 2023, more than double the amount in the previous year.
Source: The Guardian
