Washington Post: Pentagon is using oil sourced from Russia
(Baonghean.vn) - According to the Washington Post, banned petroleum products have continued to flow into the US military through a Greek refinery.
RT recently reported that a Washington Post investigation on November 14 revealed that the Pentagon is ignoring Washington's own sanctions against Russia as it continues to purchase petroleum products produced from the country's oil, following a circuitous route leading to a US military supplier, despite the embargo being in effect.
Petroleum products made from Russian oil continue to be shipped through the Pentagon’s key fuel supplier, the Motor Oil Hellas refinery on the Aegean Sea in Greece. Ship tracking data shows that the vital fuel is being shipped from Russian Black Sea ports through an oil storage facility in Turkey, according to the Washington Post.
This route is believed to have helped conceal the Russian origin of the oil products, as they “changed hands several times before reaching Greece”.
On paper, the Motor Oil Hellas refinery gets its fuel from the Dortyol shipping terminal in Türkiye.
Ship tracking records and trade data reveal that since EU and G7 sanctions on Russian petroleum products came into effect in February, Russian deliveries to Dortyol have totaled 2.7 million barrels, or more than 69% of fuel oil shipped by sea.
Robert Auers, a refined fuels market analyst at research firm RBN Energy, confirmed the Washington Post’s findings, saying: “I don’t see any other possible conclusion than Russian fuel is going to Motor Oil Hellas.”
According to the US newspaper, at least five shipments from Russia to the Dortyol terminal this year were initially sent by Russian oil company Rosneft. Transaction data shows that after being loaded onto tankers, each shipment was subsequently purchased by a company based in the United Arab Emirates.
The fuel was no longer marked as Russian when it arrived in Greece, where it was refined and mixed into supplies ordered by the US military.
“It is impossible to determine exactly how much Russian-origin fuel oil is in the products the Pentagon buys. Those products are refined with multiple components that cannot be fully traced during production,” the Washington Post noted.
The paper also cited federal contracting data, saying that since the US embargo on Russian oil took effect in early March 2022, the Pentagon has signed new contracts worth nearly $1 billion with Motor Oil Hellas.
Meanwhile, ship tracking records show that more than a million barrels of jet fuel have also been shipped from Greek refineries to government and corporate customers in Italy, France, Spain and the UK since the ban on Russian oil products was imposed in February.
