Russia: are Greek shipowners and Belgian traders Putin’s allies?
Russia's oil and energy exports in general are continuing rather calmly at the moment and, if they are reduced, it is mainly due to voluntary limitations by Moscow and not to Western policies or sanctions.
The European countries, members of the Union, who in words are on the front line against Putin and in favor of Ukraine, in reality play an important role in these trades, both in the petorlio and natural gas sectors.
Let's start with oil: as Robin Brooks points out, the volume of transportation carried out by Greek shipowners based on the total volume of oil exported from Russia has remained more or less stable, or has decreased slightly:
There has been a decline in oil transports by Greek tankers, but simply because, in total, the volume of oil exported from Russia has decreased, as can be seen from the two graphs. The increase in transports by tankers from third countries, meaning countries with various flags, is interesting, demonstrating the activity of the Russian "Shadow Fleet".
Robin Brroks also places the blame for this on the Greek government Mitsotakis, which is seen as conniving with Russia. Frankly, we disagree: Mitsotakis has no interest in disturbing the large Greek shipping groups, but this, if anything, is for internal political reasons, not out of connivance with Putin.
The Belgians go about their business
If the role of Greek importers is evident in oil, in the Liquefied Natural Gas market the lion's share of the service in favor of Russia is done by a country that is the seat of NATO, Belgium.
While Belgium's total LNG imports in February increased by just 4%, imports from Russia saw a much more significant increase of 44%. At the same time, Belgium's LNG re-exports increased by a whopping 81% – a significant portion of which was shipped to Spain and China – pointing to the country's role in the transshipment of Russian gas globally.
Therefore Belgium, per se, will not have increased the import of Russian gas, but, on the other hand, its dealers are enriching themselves with the
“Pecunia non olet”
The Roman emperor Vespasian also became known to history for his saying “Pecunia non olet”, money has no smell, meaning it is more important to make profits rather than worry about where they come from.
The saying applies perfectly to Russian gas and oil: as long as it is possible to make profits from Russian exports there will always be someone ready to take advantage of it. If anything, the constraint, for some countries, could be the "Price Ceiling": with the value of oil increasing it is increasingly less likely to export below the ceiling set by the G7.
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The article Russia: are Greek shipowners and Belgian traders Putin's allies? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/russia-gli-armatori-greci-e-i-commercianti-belgi-sono-alleati-di-putin/ on Sun, 07 Apr 2024 12:40:04 +0000.