Russian energy company Lukoil has been shipping Norwegian crude to its big Bulgarian refinery after halting imports of Russian Urals crude.
Imports of Johan Sverdrup oil from the North Sea hit more than 1m barrels into the Burgas Neftohim refinery last month, according to S&P Global’s Commodities at Sea.
Two aframax tanker cargoes of around 550,000 barrels were delivered to the 190,000-barrel-per-day plant.
These were the first Johan Sverdrup cargoes to head there since December and the biggest monthly amount ever to have arrived at the Black Sea refinery, Bulgaria’s only such plant and the biggest in the Balkans.
Burgas Neftohim exports products to the US, North Africa, the Mediterranean and Asia, the Lukoil website says.
Demand for the Equinor-produced oil has risen since the European embargo on Russian imports.
Bulgaria had an European Union exemption for Russian oil imports, but Lukoil came under pressure to halt shipments of Russia’s Urals grade anyway.
The oil company stopped Urals imports in December, Platts reported.
Russian crude ban
Russian crude exports to Bulgaria were then banned on 1 March this year, 10 months before the original exemption expired.
The refinery used to bring in 100,000 barrels per day of Urals.
Lukoil had increasingly looked to Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya to replace the Russian barrels, shipping data shows.
A small amount of Tunisian crude was also shipped in during January and February, according to official Bulgarian customs data seen by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Lukoil has not commented.
The company has previously said it was considering selling the Burgas refinery as part of a strategic review of its operations in the country, due to “unfair, biased political decisions”.
