Commodities Market Headlines | Reuters

Russian oil arrives in Cuba after year-long hiatus | Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russian-oil-arrives-cuba-after-year-long-hiatus-2024-03-31

Cuban state-run media said at the weekend that 90,000 metric tons of Russian oil had arrived in the cash and fuel-short country to help alleviate power outages and gasoline shortages.

In 2022, Russia resumed some oil shipments to the Communist-run Caribbean island after they ceased with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, according to shipping data no Russian oil left the country for Cuba last year even as Russian media reported in June an agreement was reached between the two governments to supply 1.64 million metric tons of oil and derivatives annually.

Jorge Piñón, who studies Cuba’s energy infrastructure and supply at the University of Texas at Austin, put the value of the shipment at $46 million. Piñón said it was too early to tell if the arrival of the oil meant regular shipments would resume.

According to Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy, the Communist-run country needs 8 million metric tons of oil and equivalents annually, of which 3 million tons are produced locally.

Venezuela is Cuba’s main supplier of oil, but shipments have declined in recent years. Last year Mexico exported significant amounts of oil to Cuba but has not done so this year.

Cuba has been mired in crisis since the decade began with the Gross Domestic product down 10% from the 2019 mark resulting in a scarcity of food, medicine and other basic goods.

Fuel consumption has been around 6.5 million metric tons during this period, according to the government, which has said that so far this year fuel imports have fallen further, resulting in lengthier blackouts and less gasoline.

Rising social tensions have led to more unrest than the island has seen since the 1959 revolution and mass migration, mainly to the U.S.

The Cuban government largely blames U.S. sanctions for the crisis and U.S. subversion for the unrest, charges that Washington denies.

Russia says it shipped 200,000 tonnes of free grain to six African countries | Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-says-it-shipped-200000-tonnes-free-grain-six-african-countries-2024-

Russia’s agriculture minister said late on Tuesday that Moscow had completed its initiative of shipping 200,000 metric tonnes of free grain to six African countries, as promised by President Vladimir Putin in July.

Russia shipped 50,000 tonnes each to Somalia and the Central African Republic and 25,000 tonnes each to Mali, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and Eritrea, Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev told Putin during a meeting, according to transcript on the Kremlin’s website.

Putin had promised to deliver free grain to the six countries at a summit with African leaders in July, soon after Moscow withdrew from a deal that had allowed Ukraine to ship grain from its Black Sea ports despite the war Russia has been waging.

The deal, known as the Black Sea grain initiative, had helped lower prices on the global market. But Putin argued it was failing to get supplies to the countries in most urgent need.

“After the Russia-Africa summit, we have been maintaining relations (with African countries and building cooperation,” Patrushev told Putin. “As a result, we were able to deliver this volume of wheat to these countries quite quickly.”

He also told Putin that Russia expects to export up to 70 million metric tonnes of grain in the 2023-2024 agricultural year. In the previous season, Russia shipped 66 million tonnes worth almost $16.5 billion, he added.

The 2023-2024 agricultural year started July 1, 2023, and lasts until June 30, 2024.

Russia hikes oil exports from major Eastern port to help offset EU ban | Reuters
augmentation des exports de pétrole au départ du terminal de Koz’mino, dans la baie de Nakhodka, 50 km à l’Est de Vladivostok

▻https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/exclusive-russia-hikes-oil-exports-major-eastern-port-help-offset-eu-ban-20
▻https://www.reuters.com/resizer/FDODKHCXh2PqFsQt8nsJL2bOeBg=/1200x628/smart/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/DW2N5475PVJ47LBIH3IR477XSU.jpg
A general view of an oil terminal of the Transneft – Kozmino Port near the far eastern town of Nakhodka, Russia November 15, 2017.
REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev

Russia is ramping up oil exports from its major eastern port of #Kozmino by about a fifth, aiming to meet surging demand from Asian buyers and offset the impact of European Union sanctions, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Moscow has said it hopes to reroute energy exports from the West to Asia, but doing so via long tanker voyages from European sea ports is expensive and complicated by Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, such as on shipping.

Russia’s pipeline monopoly Transneft has already increased the amount of crude pumped to Kozmino on its main Asian oil route, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) by using chemical additives to speed up oil flows, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Transneft did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Moscow also plans to send an extra 80,000 bpd of so-called ESPO Blend crude to Kozmino via rail from Meget, a route previously used to supply Kozmino and domestic refineries when the ESPO pipeline was being built, the sources said.

The additional supplies will allow Kozmino to increase overall loadings to some 900,000 bpd in the months ahead, from an average of around 750,000 bpd so far this year, they added. In 2021, Kozmino loaded about 720,000 bpd (35.1 million tonnes).