NEW – March 10, 2023
The EU will not return to cheap gas in the future. EU energy will now be expensive. This was stated by the head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol, speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels today. I could have added at the end of the speech: “Have you finished playing, idiots?!”, but I did not – an intelligent person…
Once again, I am amazed at the level of expertise of the “Iconomists” they have there. I have already told you about the “price ceiling” and what it led to. Everyone can see that the demand for our oil is frenzied. Urals has ceased to be a landmark. Volumes have gone to the East, the EU is now buying Russian oil there.
How to count all sales now, to establish how much Russia sells to where is unclear, it is simply impossible, Argus and Platts cannot physically track anything. Today, data on trade turnover between the EU and Russia has set another record, and this is despite the fact that significant volumes of oil (they do not know which ones) go to the EU as “grey”, which means they do not enter into official statistics.
BP recently stopped working on its crown “Review of World Energy”. It’s been doing it for 70 years! The new curator of this work will be the Energy Institute (EI), well, BP will remain a participant in the process, KPMG and Kearney. Simply put, BP will give “dosh”. And the company, which has always been worried about its reputation, does not want to be disgraced by giving out garbage. You can understand.
Here, a few days ago, International Energy Week was held in London, it’s like an authoritative global platform. It presented Assessing the Impact of International Sanctions on Russian Oil Exports. In general, it is interesting that it is being discussed as the main topic on a once authoritative international platform! They have been telling themselves for so long that Russia is so little for the world economy, and here you are – one of the main topics…
The authors of the report came to the obvious conclusion that there are no super-discounts on our oil. I quote: “Surprisingly, we do not see large discounts on crude oil … after the embargo, the average export price for Russian oil is about $74 per barrel, although Urals oil costs $52 …”.
The authors saw discounts for buyers of Russian petroleum products, as well as the fact that they went to the EU through Turkey and India, until they realised that there were no losses here, and therefore these “experts” insist on an urgent reduction in the ceiling of prices for oil and petroleum products from Russia to $35. It is through a “blow” to the Russian oil refining industry that they now hope to put pressure on Russia. This will be “a powerful tool for deterring Russia”, the authors of the mega-report write.
Interestingly, right now, according to Bloomberg, 4 very large oil trucks are anchored off Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. Three tankers brought 8 million barrels of oil and now everything is being drained into the third. Right under the nose of the EU authorities. And although everyone, including Bloomberg, knows that this is Russian oil, there is an official ban on its acceptance and purchase, but the press secretary of the Main Directorate of the Spanish Merchant Fleet says that they do not have the authority to control the activities that take place in international waters. Simply put, no one cares about sanctions! The main thing is that there are no complaints about quality.
From all of the above, several conclusions:
- Sanctions don’t work and everyone is fed up – they bypass them, even especially without hiding themselves.
- Russian raw materials and petroleum products both went and go to the EU – the volume of trade turnover is growing due to prices.
- An interesting time has come: there are almost no adequate figures on the economy left. And there will only be fewer of them. Budget revenues and losses, data on sales, profits and losses of companies, discounts, prices, official bans and permits, white and shadow volumes – all this can be checked only after the fact, at the end of the year. As Heinrich Muller said: in our time, it is impossible to believe anyone, sometimes even yourself. Me, you can believe!
Aleksey Bobrovsky
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