North African Countries Snap Up Russian Oil Products Shunned by West

Some Russian cargo is being exported back to Europe, analysts suspect



With Russia cut off from the European market, North African countries have stepped forward to become voracious buyers of its diesel and other refined oil products.

The rise in trade has offered a lifeline of sorts for Moscow, providing a healthy new revenue stream, but also raised concerns about whether it is undermining Western efforts to remove Russian fossil fuels from their economies.


European nations, which before the war accounted for around 60% of Russian refined oil-product exports, have curtailed those flows in recent months. A European Union ban on imports of Russian refined oil products—which includes diesel and gasoline among others—came into force this month alongside measures to cap the price Russia earns on sales elsewhere. Those measures follow similar sanctions on Russian crude oil imports in December.

The sanctions have largely worked as intended, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, but have forced Moscow to redirect exports away from Europe to alternative markets.

North African countries picked up the slack.

Morocco’s imports of Russian diesel, which stood at around 600,000 barrels for the whole of 2021, surged to 2 million barrels in January, with at least a further 1.2 million barrels expected to arrive in the country in February, according to data from Kpler. Algeria and Egypt have also seen an uptick.

Tunisia, which similarly imported almost no Russian oil products in 2021, has in recent months been devouring Russian supplies of diesel, gasoil, gasoline and naphtha—which is commonly used to make chemicals and plastics. The country took 2.8 million barrels of Russian oil products in January and is expected to import another 3.1 million barrels this month.

The increased imports to Tunisia and Morocco coincided with an uptick in their own refined-product exports, raising concerns that Russian cargoes were being blended with other oil products and re-exported. That process disguises the ultimate origin of the products and complicates Western efforts to remove Russian fossil fuels from their economies.

“Even if you wanted to regulate that, how would you?” said Andreas Economou, head of oil research at The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “If a cargo is 51% from Morocco, 49% from Russia, how would you referee that?”


The shipments occurred before Feb. 5, when the latest round of sanctions on trading became effective, so there were no laws against re-exporting Russian oil products at the time. Still, they point to the headache that European nations face in trying to keep their imports free of Russian diesel and other oil products.

If the trend continues, it could also hurt the West’s goal to deprive Moscow of income for its war in Ukraine, analysts say.

The quantities North African countries are importing are too much for them to take on their own, said Viktor Katona, senior oil analyst at Kpler, who expects some of the Russian products to make their way back to Europe. “Trust me, we are not witnessing some renaissance in Maghrebi refining,” he said, referring to the region of North Africa.

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North African Countries Snap Up Russian Oil Products Shunned by West