West African country to resell Russian oil – Bloomberg
A vessel loaded with Russian oil has been tracked as sailing to Ghana where its cargo will reportedly be stored for further resale, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
The tanker Theseus with about 600,000 barrels of Russian oil onboard was traveling from a port in the Black Sea, the outlet said, citing tanker-tracking data. The cargo, which arrived in the territorial waters of Ghana on Friday, was due to be transferred to storage tanks at an oil refinery in Tema, Bloomberg quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying.
The CEO of Ghana’s National Petroleum Authority Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid stated that if the cargo was destined for the country it would be “blocked.” His comment came before the tanker reached the country’s territorial waters.
Ghana is a minor oil-exporting country with average exports of about 140,000 barrels a day over the past six months. In 2021, it earned a total of $3.95 billion from crude exports, according to official data. The West African country sits alongside sub-Saharan Africa’s two major oil suppliers, Nigeria and Angola.
The delivery to the Tema oil refinery will mark the first shipment of Russian crude to Ghana since at least October 2018, according to tracking data.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg has suggested that “traders could be scouring the market for new buyers of Russian barrels” after the EU, G7 nations their allies imposed a ban on Russian seaborne oil exports along with a price cap of $60 per barrel last December. Another embargo banning almost all imports of Russian oil products and accompanied with price caps on diesel and other oil products kicked in on February 5.
Western sanctions prompted Russia, once EU’s biggest supplier, to divert its energy exports to Asian markets, with India and China becoming top buyers. At the same time many European consumers have been looking for loopholes allowing indirect purchases of sanctioned oil and were using countries that hadn’t joined the ban as back doors to bypass their own restrictions.
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