[cityhantam]

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/2...sia-afloat

How China and India’s appetite for oil and gas kept Russia afloat

Despite Western-led sanctions aimed at punishing Russia over its war in Ukraine, growing demand for Russian energy imports has helped keep the country’s besieged economy afloat.

China and India, Asia’s biggest and third-biggest economies, respectively, have been the biggest drivers of the trend.


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China’s imports of Russian crude oil spiked 8 percent in 2022, the equivalent of 1.72 million barrels per day (bpd), according to Chinese customs data, making Russia the East Asian giant’s second-biggest supplier.

Kpler, a commodities market analysis firm, has estimated that China will import some 5.62 million bpd in February, beating the previous all-time high.


China’s imports of Russian pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas in 2022 soared 2.6 times and 2.4 times, respectively, to $3.98bn and $6.75bn, respectively.

Meanwhile, China’s imports of Russian coal last year surged 20 percent to 68.06 million tonnes.

India, which has emerged as the biggest customer of Russian oil, in January imported a record 1.4 million bpd of the commodity — a more than 9 percent rise from December.

India’s imports of thermal coal in 2022 rose nearly 15 percent to 161.18 million tonnes.


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Turkey has also emerged as a top buyer of Russian energy crude oil and coal, with analysts pointing to Pakistan and Bangladesh as markets that are likely to follow suit and ramp up Russian energy imports at discounted prices.

Taking a page from heavily-sanctioned Iran, Russia has built up a “shadow fleet” of up to 600 old oil tankers to circumvent Western sanctions, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).


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Demand for oil storage tanks in Singapore is also surging, Bloomberg reported last month, suggesting that Russian fuel is being blended with other oil and re-exported, making it more difficult to trace.