Russia’s largest private oil company, Lukoil, has added about 140,000 metric tons of crude oil to its original Novorossiisk loading plan for July after Ukraine halted oil transit to Europe along the Druzhba pipeline, market sources said.

Lukoil plans to load the Suzemax vessel Arus in Novorossiisk on July 23-24, while total top-ups to Lukoil’s original loading plan for this month will reach at least 0.34 million tons amid top-ups in Russia’s Baltic Sea ports, they said.

Lukoil will load two Urals cargoes of 100,000 tons each from Primоrsk in the middle of July, according to trading and industry sources.

Lukoil did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Last week Slovakia and Hungary said they had stopped receiving oil from key supplier Lukoil after Ukraine imposed a ban last month on the transit of resources from the Russian energy company via its territory.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that interruptions in Russian oil transit via Ukraine were painful for buyers of Russian oil.

Hungary and Slovakia have asked the European Commission to mediate a consultation procedure with Ukraine, Hungary’s foreign minister said on Monday, after Kyiv placed Russian group Lukoil on a sanctions list, stopping its supplies to the two countries.

Russia’s overall oil exports and transit from its western ports in July were expected to decline from June amid higher refinery runs and Moscow’s pledge to stick to OPEC+ output cuts.

Russia’s oil producers Rosneft and Lukoil had initially planned to sharply cut oil exports from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in July.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)