Russia’s crude oil shipments to crucial Asian markets fall

Bloomberg

Russia’s seaborne crude exports in the seven days to July 1 rebounded from the previous week’s plunge, but shipments to Asia are slipping, even as flows are diverted to the country’s Black Sea terminal to cut the voyage distance to India.
Aggregate crude flows from Russian ports were up week-on-week by 23%, recovering most of the volume lost over the previous seven days during a brief halt in shipments from the Baltic port of Primorsk. Still, cargoes bound for Asia — a crucial market where China and India have stepped in to prop up Russian exports others have shunned in response to its invasion of Ukraine — were down by more than 15% on both a weekly and four-week average basis from the highs seen at the end of May.
Overall, Russia’s seaborne shipments returned to 3.67 million barrels a day, broadly in line with the plateau level achieved since the start of April.
Leaders of the G7 group of
the world’s largest advanced economies agreed to examine the idea of imposing a price cap on Russia’s oil exports to reduce the flow of funds to the Kremlin after its troops invaded Ukraine four months ago, while allowing the oil to keep flowing. Questions remain on how such a cap could be imposed and how President Vladimir Putin might react.
Shipments in the four weeks to July 1 averaged 3.46 million barrels a day, their lowest since the period ending April 15. The drop from a peak of 3.75 million barrels a day in the four weeks to April 29 isn’t huge, but at 7.6% it isn’t insignificant either.