China and India helped bring Russia's crude oil shipments to return to pre-war levels

Per BI

While the rest of the world was cutting off Russian crude oil, China and India have remained buying from them. Now, due to the two countries, Russia's crude oil experts have reached the same levels as they were before the war.

It was reported that 90% of Russia's seaborne exports for crude oil were toward China and India, per Kpler. This comes as Europe is steering clear of Russian oil.

China and India were reportedly responsible for buying 1.5 million barrels daily from Russia. Due to both countries, Russia has been able to make up for the Western sanctions that pushed it to record-low levels.

Russia's crude oil export levels are now at 3.5 million barrels daily, compared to the 3.35 million barrels in the year-ago quarter. This meant that compared to the numbers before Russia's war on Ukraine; the country saw an increase of 150,000 barrel exports.

Kpler lead oil analyst Matt Smith gave a statement regarding what China and India were doing.

Smith: "Both China and Russia (supposedly India) are taking advantage of discounted Russian crude, benefiting from the sanctions applied on Russian materials by other countries,"

Recently, China has been pushing other countries to pay for its products in yuan instead of dollars. One of these most recent countries is Argentina, which recently announced that it would pay for imports from China with the Chinese yuan instead of the US dollar.

Aside from that, the Chinese yuan has recently surpassed the US dollar as the most commonly used currency for cross-border transactions in China. In March, the total value of cross-border payments and receipts in yuan reached a record high of $549.9 billion.

Just a month before, it was reported that the total value of cross-border payments and receipts sat at $434.5 billion.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

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