The World’s Oil Map Is Being Redrawn by Rising Russian Flows to Asia

  • India and China take more cargoes from Moscow amid sanctions
  • ‘Clearly Asian buyers are the winners here for cheap oil’

A tanker sails off towards the East China Sea off the coast of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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The global oil map is being redrawn as the long-run impact of western sanctions channels more barrels from Russia to Asia’s largest economies, with China also taking crude from Iran and Venezuela.

China and India took more than 30% of their combined imports from the three states in April, according to data tracked by intelligence firm Kpler. That’s up from just 12% in February 2022, the month Russia invaded Ukraine.