Russia shipped the most crude in a month and a half in the four weeks through September 27, with overseas flows averaging 3.71 million barrels a day, the most since early August, Bloomberg’s tanker-tracking data showed. Four-week average prices for the key Urals and ESPO grades hit their highest in more than three months, propelled by disruption to Saudi crude shipments during repairs to a pipeline attacked earlier in the month, pushing the value of the cargoes close to the highest since the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
But the benefit is being undercut from within. Russia raised its 2026 crude export forecast by about 150,000 barrels a day while cutting its refined-products shipment forecast by a bigger 500,000 barrels a day, reflecting refineries knocked out by Ukrainian drone strikes. Crude that cannot be processed domestically is being diverted into the export stream, flattering the shipment numbers.
The diesel ban is the cost. Moscow extended its ban on diesel, marine fuel and gasoil exports by direct producers through October 31 to stabilize the domestic market during harvest season; a broader ban on exports by non-producers runs to January 31, 2027, alongside gasoline and aviation fuel curbs. Before the restrictions, Russia supplied roughly 10 percent of global seaborne diesel. In the week to September 24, seaborne diesel and gasoil loadings from Russia’s Black Sea ports fell to zero for the first time in the records cited, with total Russian loadings down to about 81,000 tons, all from the Baltic port of Primorsk. The shortfall has been severe enough that Russia has been forced to import fuel from India, one of the largest buyers of its crude.
The squeeze is priced in. Europe’s diesel premium over crude sits near $82 a barrel, against about $28 at the end of February, before the US-Israel war with Iran and the Ukrainian refinery campaign began. With East Coast distillate inventories 32 percent below their five-year seasonal average in September and the EIA expecting them to stay 20 to 30 percent below average through the winter, diesel, not crude, is the market setting the price of the winter.