Saudi Arabia and Iraq are building oil supply to the European market, where buyers gradually refuse to import energy carriers from Russia. This conclusion was brought by the Bloomberg agency by analyzing the tracking data of sea vessels.
Saudi Arabia directs tankers with oil to Egypt, where it will fall into the SUMED pipeline, connecting the Ain-Sokhna terminal located on the Red Sea, with the Mediterranean port of Sidi Carrier. There, oil is again shipped to tankers and sent to customers from Europe. According to the agency, in the first three weeks of July, more than 1 million barrels of oil per day arrived in the pipeline, which doubled the volumes recorded in the same period last year. Compared to the previous month, the SUMED power increased by about 200 thousand barrels per day.
Iraq, unlike Saudi Arabia, supplies oil to the European market only by sea. This month, tankers, following from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, transported about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. Most of this oil was shipped in Iraq, the agency writes. Thus, the total volume of oil supplies from the Middle East to Europe could grow up to 2.2 million barrels per day, which is almost 90% higher than January 2022.
On June 3, the European Union Council adopted the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, which includes an embargo for sea supplies of oil and oil products. He suggests that within six months the European Union will completely abandon Russian raw oil and for eight months – from oil products.