The EU Still Receiving Russian Oil and Refined Products From India

What Sanctions? Is EVERYTHING for "Show" These Days?

Via Zerohedge:

Last December the EU barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later. However, the rules didn’t stop countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a big markup: as shown in the chart below, just the Brent to Urals price differential, a byproduct of the Russian sanctions, is about $25/bbl, almost a third of the price of a barrel of crude. The markups on Russian product are even greater when dealing with refined products such as gasoline or diesel.

Buy Low (Urals oil) and Sell High (to the EU)

In fact, India has become so good at reselling Russian oil to the same Europeans who refuse to buy it directly from Moscow for a much lower price, that the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.

In other words, Europe is still buying Russian oil, keeping Putin's military machine well-funded, but because of the virtue signaling exercise of buying Russian oil though a mediator, the transaction ends up costing Europeans billions more than if they simply had purchased the oil directly.

[Doug here: This is the reason why the EU is not in a steep recession now. Remember, energy is everything: if you don’t have it, you have no economy. And don’t be surprised if we find many countries doing the same thing (buying Russian oil) and selling refined products to the EU—and almost completely filling the gap created by EU Sanctions. I would think Malaysia, Thailand and other Mideastern countries are doing the same. In other words, the EU sanctions are just for show. Gee, it seems EVERYTHING is for show these days]