Last month saw a record 5.75m barrels of Russian crude discharged in the US, with New York-headquartered commodities trackers ClipperData projecting a further record this month of 7.5m barrels.
The first delivery of light sour Varandey to the US Gulf Coast occurred back in February 2020 – after previously only having discharged at the Trainer refinery on the Atlantic Coast – and it has become a regular fixture with five consecutive months of deliveries to PADD3.
There has been a recent delivery of the grade to the US Atlantic Coast, with 1.05m barrels to PBF’s Delaware Bay refinery, while 722,000 barrels of Urals are just passing Bermuda on the aframax Claret Prince, set to discharge at LOOP.
Russia leapfrogged Saudi Arabia to become the third-largest oil supplier to the US last year, accounting for 6.85% of all US imports. That amounted to an average of 538,000 barrels a day — or around 5% of Russia’s entire oil production.
