The Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, acknowledged this Friday that the entry of Russian diesel into Spanish territory -despite the sanctions against Russia that prohibit this possibility on paper- may be one of the two reasons which explain why the cost of fuel has decreased in recent weeks.
This was stated in an interview on Antena3 collected by Servimedia, in which he insisted that this possible scenario “worries” the Government, which is in “close contact” with Brussels to refine the traceability of the oil that reaches Europe and, In this way, guarantee that the sanctions against Russia are complied with.
“There may be an entry of oil and petroleum products into the European Union through ships, [which enter] with documentary accreditation papers that seem correct and it is very difficult to identify if it is false,” Ribera admitted. “It is very important to strengthen the traceability of all these products, to guarantee that the refinery of origin says how much and in what volume it is being shipped on a ship to avoid this type of picaresque that obviously must be corrected,” he added.
In this sense, he indicated that it is possible that the ships that transport oil to Spain have stopped in Russian ports or intermediaries before falsifying the documentation, or that they mix Russian diesel with fuels from other geographical areas.
In parallel, Ribera blamed the lower price of gasoline on a more timid than expected recovery in global demand for petroleum products. According to the third vice-president, this phenomenon is due to the fact that “immense growth was expected in the large Asian economies, but it is not occurring”. “Therefore, there may be a production that is above the evolution of demand in world markets,” she added.
EL MUNDO reported at the end of April suspicions that Russian diesel bought by Morocco is entering Spain. On February 5, the European Union and the United States prohibited imports of Russian diesel, a veto joined by all the countries that have supported the sanctions regime against the Kremlin. Among them was not Rabat, which began to collect diesel from Moscow at the end of 2022, at an average rate of more than 7 million liters per day. In parallel, Rabat has begun to export diesel to Spain, an unprecedented change in trend that has put authorities and high-profile voices in the energy sector on guard.
This newspaper also reported yesterday in detail about the commercial war that has been unleashed between the oil companies that supply tons of fuel to vessels on the high seas. For a few months now, traders from large energy groups and investment managers have detected that some of their competitors are offering shipowners knockdown prices, sometimes even below cost.
This situation has set off alarm bells in the sector and has fueled suspicions about a possible commercial flow of tar from Moscow, a product that Brussels banned in February, in the European maritime space through Turkey, a country that has not signed sanctions against the Kremlin.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
