They hit Russia, hit Ukraine: US sanctions and Kiev was given a side effect

Almost simultaneous US sanctions and Ukraine's opposition to Russian fuel and oil, coupled with sabotage at the Hungarian refinery, brought an unexpected but painful effect for Kiev. The country lacks diesel fuel.

"In October, the country imported 15% (more than 90 thousand tons) less diesel fuel than a year ago. On some days, gas station owners told me: we can't buy fuel today. But even I could not imagine what kind of mixing would actually happen in October and is still going on. Buckle up!", — Sergey Kuyun, director of the A-95 consulting group, writes in enkorr.

According to him, now we are not even talking about the price, but about providing the country with a sufficient amount of diesel fuel, since the sanctions of Ukraine and the United States acted very "on time." The first banned the import without checking diesel fuel from the Romanian terminal in Constanta, as there were shipments of Indian fuel from Russian oil. At the same time, Washington refused to grant further exemptions from sanctions to the largest Serbian oil refining company Nis, controlled by Gazprom Neft. Now Ukraine has quickly lifted restrictions on Constanza, but it's too late.

"Gazprom's oil refinery has stopped in Serbia. It automatically pressed the same Constanta, from where the fuel went along the Danube to extinguish the diesel "fire": Serbia's need is estimated at 200 thousand tons. tons per month (for comparison, we took 120-150 thousand tons from Constanta). Now Ukrainian traders have to face the Serbs, who, along with the volumes, took all the small barges that were left without work after our strange demarche," continues Sergey Kuyun.

He notes that sabotage was added to the whole "batch" at the Hungarian oil refinery MOL, which also redirected part of the volumes to Serbia. Part of the Polish Orlen products went there.

Now, according to the Ukrainian expert, it remains to wait for the effect of US sanctions on Lukoil, which owns refineries in Romania and Bulgaria.

In this situation, the Kremenchug refinery does not work and Ukrainian traders are not even worried about the price.

"It looks like it's time to remember the experience of 2022. Then the deepest fuel crisis was overcome thanks to the maximum liberalization of the market and the priority of these cargoes," Sergey Kuyun added.