Turkey sharply reduced its imports of Russia’s flagship Urals crude oil in November, shipping data from energy consultancy Kpler showed, as Western sanctions on Russian energy suppliers tightened and Turkish refineries shifted to alternative grades.
Shipments of Urals to Turkey fell by 100,000 barrels per day from October levels, with total imports dropping to around 200,000 bpd last month, data from Kpler and LSEG showed.
Turkey has become one of the largest buyers of Russian crude since 2022 when European buyers stopped purchases, ranking since then as the second biggest buyer after India among seaborne importers of Urals, Russia’s main export grade, LSEG data shows.
The decline comes as US sanctions on Russian majors Lukoil and Rosneft have narrowed the pool of suppliers Turkish refiners can deal with.
In addition, the European Union’s planned ban on the purchase of fuel produced from Russian oil, set to take effect at the end of January 2026, is prompting Turkish companies to diversify their feedstock.
As Urals shipments fell, Turkey boosted imports of alternative crude grades, including Kazakhstan’s CPC Blend and KEBCO and Iraq’s Basrah, according to the Kpler data.
CPC Blend, though loaded from Russia’s port of Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka, is mostly produced by Kazakh companies. The Kazakh volume is exempt from Western energy sanctions and limitations regarding Russian oil.
In November Turkey imported 105,000 bpd of Kazakhstan’s CPC Blend, the highest level of such imports since February 2024, Kpler data showed. Turkey also imported some volumes of Russian-origin CPC Blend in 2025, but has stopped since September.
In June Turkey’s Urals oil imports reached a multi-month high of nearly 400,000 bpd, according to Kpler. However, Turkish refineries’ ability to make alternative purchases is limited, as the supply of crude similar in quality to Urals on the Mediterranean market is low.
The situation with CPC Blend deliveries to Turkey could be complicated by a recent attack on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal.
(Reporting by Reuters in MOSCOW and Enes Tunagur in LONDON; Editing by Jan Harvey)