Maritime oil exports from the Russian Federation fall to their lowest since late May

The volumes of sea export of Russian crude oil for the four-week period fell to the lowest level since the end of May. The main reason was a pause in strikes on oil refineries at the end of July, which allowed Russian enterprises to carry out repairs, increase domestic processing, and redirect some of the crude away from the export direction.

This is reported by Delo.ua, citing Bloomberg data.

Over the four-week period, crude oil exports from the Russian Federation averaged 3,71 million barrels per day.

Refinery factor and new attacks: the pause in strikes at the end of July allowed refineries to increase processing, but at the beginning of August attacks resumed — in the first week of August five Russian refineries were hit, and this week another two.

Situation in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea: shipments from Novorossiysk remain at about half of peak levels due to tanker attacks. Because of this, Ankara temporarily restricted movement through the Turkish straits for ships bound for ports in the Russian Federation and Ukraine. In the Baltic port Ust-Luga, loading volumes in the last week also halved from two weeks ago.

Weekly dynamics: in one week (to 9 August) 32 tankers loaded 22,78 million barrels compared with 24,49 million barrels on 35 ships the week before. Daily average shipments fell from 3,5 million to 3,25 million barrels per day.

Exports revenues and gray transport schemes

Despite the contraction in physical volumes, the aggregate revenues from exports hardly changed:

Export value: the gross value of four-week export remained at the level of $1,7 billion per week, as the decline in volumes was offset by rising prices. Urals oil in the Baltic rose to $63,80 per barrel, in the Black Sea — to $62,70, and the Pacific grade ESPO — to $69,63.

Oil at sea and transshipment: volumes of Russian oil on tankers at sea fell to 107 million barrels, thanks to high supplies to India (about 2,4 million barrels per day).

Delays and the “shadow fleet”: four Urals tankers have been docked for more than a month off the Egyptian port of Mersey-el-Chamra. Additionally, near the Ryau archipelago (Singapore), about 30 tankers loaded with Arctic oil have accumulated, where covert ship-to-ship transfers are conducted with trackers turned off.

Overall since the start of the year, sea flows from the Russian Federation amount to 3,62 million barrels per day, which is 280 thousand barrels per day above the average level of 2025 year and remains higher than annual figures since the start of the full-scale invasion.

As a reminder, it was previously reported that Russia is increasing Arctic-route oil supplies to support record exports, aiming to shorten tanker delivery times to Asia and avoid risks in the Red Sea.