Russia Has So Far Defied All Expectations
We are 17 days into 2023 and there are no signs of any slowdown in Russian crude exports.
So far in January, Russian seaborne crude exports according to Kpler are around ~4.8 million b/d. This is +300k b/d month-over-month. This brings about a rather serious question, what sanctions are we talking about here? Where is the production decline we thought was coming?
Now looking at the data provided by Kpler, we noticed two meaningful things:
China and India combined are accounting for roughly half of the Russian crude exports. Compare this to Jan 2022 when India and China accounted for only ~950k b/d or well below 50% of what they are receiving today (~2.2 million b/d).
There are currently ~1.4 million b/d of crude exports going to "others". Many of these tankers do not have a destination target, which means we won't know where it's headed until after the fact.
All of this just implies more uncertainty for those following the oil market closely. On paper, you would think that Russian crude exports should have fallen by now given the EU sanction ban starting in December, but January data is flying in the face of that. Could this just be a push once again ahead of the product ban? Maybe, but the data is far too uncertain to draw any definitive conclusion.