Free Republic

TOKYO -- China and India have increased Russian oil purchases as prices decline due to Western import bans, the latest data shows, creating a loophole that allows Moscow to secure export revenue. China imported 800,000 barrels of Russian petroleum daily by sea last month, according to data from Refinitiv, a figure that does not include oil delivered via pipelines. The volume has soared by more than 40% from January. The number indicates that China is deliberately going after cheap Russian crude. India's marine imports of Russia's oil also spiked from zero in January to nearly 700,000 barrels a day in...

The biggest reshuffle of oil trade flows since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s is underway—and things may never return to normal. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Russian oil exports are changing global oil trade routes. Over the past nearly five decades, oil flowed more or less freely from any supplier to any customer in the world, except for sanctions on Iran and Venezuela in recent years. This free energy trade is now over, after the Russian aggression and the Western sanctions that followed, plus Europe’s irreversible decision to cut off its dependence on Russian...