Western Europe facing Russian diesel problem – Bloomberg

Western Europe continues to lean heavily on Russia as a source of diesel, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, noting that the region needs to find new supplies with fewer than ten weeks to go until sanctions all but block the imports.

According to the media outlet, citing Vortexa data, the European Union and the United Kingdom received almost half their waterborne imports of diesel-type fuel from Russia in the first 24 days of this month. The level of reliance reportedly soared from October, in line with the region’s overall imports increase, to cope with declining capacity in France due to nationwide strikes there.

Overall, tankers delivered an average of 1.34 million barrels a day of diesel-type fuel during November 1-24 into the EU and UK, the compiled data showed. That is sharply down from October, but still higher than the average for the first 10 months of the year, says the report.

Russia supplied about 600,000 barrels a day during that period, which is 45% of the total arrivals to the region. In October the EU and the UK got 34% of their fuel purchases from Russia, and the average for the first 10 months of the year stood at 51%.

Meanwhile, from February 5, EU sanctions will all but cut off seaborne imports of diesel and other refined products from Russia.

“The country is still by far the bloc’s single biggest external supplier, meaning buyers face a sharp crunch unless they can source more barrels from elsewhere to fill the gap,” Bloomberg reports.

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