Russia Rakes in $56 Billion From Rerouted Fossil Fuel Export Destinations

Since 2022, the European Union has been slapping sanctions on energy supplies from Russia. Initially, in the summer of that year, a ban on coal was levied, followed by restrictions on oil at the end of the year. As of 2023, the sanctions on oil products have gone into effect.

Russia earned almost $187 billion from oil, gas and coal supplies to a number of friendly countries last year, which is $56 billion more than the average exports to European countries before they imposed their anti-Russian sanctions, according to Sputnik's calculations.

Data from the national statistical services of the largest buyers of Russian hydrocarbons, Turkiye, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia and the EU, were analyzed. The study compared the average value of deliveries from 2019 to 2021 with those in 2023. Data from 2022 were not considered due to abnormal fluctuations in the value of imports, both in terms of price changes and supply volumes.

Before the barrage of sanctions was imposed, the 27 countries of the EU purchased an average of $102.5 billion worth of hydrocarbons from Russia annually. However, this figure plummeted to $31.6 billion last year. Consequently, the volume of lost revenue from supplies to these countries totaled $70.9 billion.

Despite this setback, the increase in exports to allied nations has more than made up for it. In total, exports to just six countries - Turkiye, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia - reached $186.7 billion last year, compared to an average of $59.9 billion between 2019 and 2021.

Thus, Russia earned an additional $126.8 billion from these destinations, which is $56 billion more than from its deliveries to the European Union.

Last year, China emerged as the largest purchaser of Russian hydrocarbons, ramping up its spending from $43.3 billion in 2019-2021 to $94.6 billion. This doubling in expenditure encompassed the purchases of coal, gas, oil, and petroleum products.

It is closely followed by India, which boosted its acquisitions of Russian hydrocarbons by nearly 18 times from the 2019-2021 average to $53.7 billion. Turkiye more than doubled its purchases to $30.1 billion, while Brazil experienced a 24-fold surge to $5.3 billion.

Malaysia boosted its imports of hydrocarbons from Russia by 2.8 times to $2 billion, and Indonesia more than quintupled these imports to $1.1 billion.

In December 2022, Moscow implemented a ban on the export of Russian oil and petroleum products to foreign entities, that is any country or company that, directly or indirectly, using the price cap in any contract. The ban applies to all stages of delivery, ultimately affecting the final buyer. This presidential decree went into effect on February 1, 2023, and has since been extended until June 2024.