Russia is set to ship record volumes of crude from its main western ports in June as refinery outages following Ukrainian drone attacks push more barrels onto export markets, three trade and port sources said on Wednesday.
Loadings from the Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga, along with the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, are expected to reach about 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) this month, the sources said. One said shipments could climb as high as 2.8 million bpd.
That would exceed the roughly 2.5 million bpd exported in May and stand about one million bpd above the preliminary forecast for the month, reflecting the scale of disruption to Russia’s refineries.
Repeated drone strikes have forced several major refineries offline, prompting Moscow to redirect crude into export channels while trying to avoid production cuts.
At the same time, the outages have strained domestic fuel supply. Several Russian regions have begun restricting sales, citing shortages of some gasoline and diesel grades and long queues at filling stations.
Russia is attempting to balance rising crude exports with the risk of fuel shortages at home, as refinery throughput remains below normal levels.
Higher Russian exports could put additional pressure on global oil prices already weighed down by increased Iranian supplies, traders said. A recent US waiver has enabled buyers in China and India to switch some purchases from Russian crude to Iranian grades, intensifying competition in key markets.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
