Nikolai Tokarev, the head of Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, said on Wednesday that oil shipments to China rose to around100 million metric tons (2 million barrels per day) in 2023.

He also told Rossiya-24 state TV that supplies to India have increased to about 70 million tons this year.

According to Chinese customs, crude oil imports from Russia jumped 8% in 2022 to 86.25 million tons from a year earlier, equivalent to 1.72 million bpd.

Russia has been able to divert most of its oil flows away from Europe, which used to be its key oil and gas sales market, after Western sanctions were imposed due to Moscow sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Europe introduced bans on seaborne crude oil and oil products imports from Russia. The EU ban doesn’t apply to shipments via the Druzhba pipeline that connects Russian oilfields with refineries in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Tokarev said that both Czech Republic and Slovakia, seen by Moscow as being among “unfriendly” countries which support sanctions against Russia, applied to Brussels for extension of the exemption from the Russian oil ban.

“On the whole, they can’t exist without our oil,” Tokarev said.

He said that Russian oil entered new markets, such as Egypt, Morocco, Myanmar and Pakistan.

Transneft, which handles more than 90% of Russia’s oil, has increased its exporting capacity with new pumping stations.

According to Tokarev, a new pumping station Achinskoye in east Siberia along its pipeline will allow the export of an additional 7 million tons of oil per year to China once it is onstream in the first half of 2024.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Bernadette Baum)