Controversial Supply of Banned Russian Oil Raises Ethical Questions

Banned Russian petroleum products follow a circuitous route to a US military supplier. Before heading to Greece, the shipment makes a detour hundreds of kilometers to an oil storage facility in Turkey. After several changes of ownership, the fuel is then sold to a Greek refinery worth the US military, according to the US daily.

Russian fuel is transported from the Russian Black Sea ports – Novorossisk, Kavkaz, Taman, Tuapse – to Turkey through the Bosphorus Strait. The fuel is no longer marked as Russian when it arrives in Greece. There, this refined and mixed in an army reservation bought in part by the US army.

After Western countries announced bans on Russian oil last year in response to the invasion of Ukraine, a Greek refinery serving the US military moved quickly to adapt. Within months, it told investors it had stopped accepting banned oil and had found other sources instead.

But there was a reason why Russian oil, at least on paper, could be so easily removed from the supply chain, Washington Post says. Oil products originating from Russia actually continued to arrive at the Motor Oil Hellas refinery in the Aegean Sea, Greece, The Washington Post investigation found, which analyzed shipping and trade data.

Thus, Russian oil followed a new route, hundreds of kilometers away, through an oil storage facility in Turkey, a route that allowed Russia’s footprint to be hidden, as ownership of the products passed several times from one owner to another before arriving in Greece.

According to Washington Post estimates, the depot at Dörtyol, Turkey, received 5.4 million barrels of fuel oil by sea in the past two years, all but 1.9 million of which came from Russia. Since the entry into force of European Union sanctions in February, 2.7 million barrels of Russian oil have been delivered to Dörtyol. During the same period, 4.2 million barrels of fuel oil were transported from the terminal to Motor Oil Hellas. These shipments represent at least 56% of all the fuel that the Greek refinery received by sea.

The Washington Post could not specify the exact proportion of the amount of fuel oil of Russian origin present in the products purchased by the Pentagon. To refine these products, several ingredients are used that cannot all be traced during production, the publication says.

It is known, however, that since March 2022, when the United States imposed sanctions on the prohibition of Russian oil, the Pentagon concluded new contracts with Motor Oil Hellas worth almost one billion dollars. Meanwhile, about 69 percent of shipments sent to Dortoyl were of Russian origin, the Post reported, citing Project on Government Oversight data.

“While some shipments to Motor Oil Hellas may comply with the evolving landscape of sanctions and embargoes, the dynamic puts the Pentagon in an awkward position: On the one hand, the US government is sending billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine to defend against the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and on the other hand, it is possible to buy products containing Russian fossil fuels, the main economic engine of the Russian war machine,” the monitoring group said.

Experts say Russia may have thwarted Western attempts to curb war revenues by restricting its trade in energy products. Last year, Moscow reportedly formed a secret fleet of “ghost tankers” to hide the origin of its oil. Meanwhile, some experts say Russian oil is likely being sold well above the $60-a-barrel price ceiling imposed by the West, in part because of this phantom fleet, as well as inflated shipping costs that can hide the true amount paid. of customers, wrote the Financial Times.

The Pentagon told Washington Post that it did not know about the Russian origin of the oil products, because the responsibility for compliance with the sanctions rests with the contractors, especially Motor Oil Hellas. The agency itself does not have the tools to control suppliers, the Pentagon said.

For its part, the Motor Oil Hellas refinery stated that the company “does not buy, process or trade Russian oil or products” and that “all its imports are certified as being of non-sanctioned origin”.

The US Treasury Department, however, sent requests to 30 owners of about a hundred vessels suspected of transporting Russian oil contrary to the price ceiling agreed by Western states, Washington Post reminds.