In the first week of April, oil exports from the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk fell by 33.2% compared with the previous week, to 115,000 tons per day, due to damage to port infrastructure, Kommersant reported on April 9, citing a review by the Center for Price Indices (CPI).
The number of tanker departures from the Baltic ports dropped from eleven to seven over the week.
According to CPI estimates, 59% of shipments are bound for India, 16% for Turkey, and 13% for China.
The port of Ust-Luga sustained damage in a drone attack on March 31 and in the following days. Also in late March, fuel storage tanks caught fire in Primorsk. On April 5, a section of the oil pipeline near Primorsk was damaged, Leningrad region governor Alexander Drozdenko reported.
Kirill Bakhtin, head of Russian equity analysis at BCS, noted that the nature of the damage at the port of Ust-Luga — likely affecting only a few storage tanks — suggests that supplies could resume within two weeks.
Russia’s total seaborne oil exports in the first week of April fell by 4.1% from the previous week, to 347,000 tons per day. Compared with March levels, shipments were down 17%.
According to CPI data, the only port to show growth in oil exports during the first week of April was Kozmino in the Russian Far East near Nakhodka, where shipments increased by 60% to 114,000 tons per day.
Supplies from Novorossiysk fell by 17.5% over the week, to 71,000 tons per day. Two oil loading berths at the port were damaged on April 6. According to market participants cited by CPI, full restoration will take at least a week. In this connection, analysts expect a decline in seaborne exports in the short term.
