“It is the most significant set of market dislocations and distortions in energy markets that I ever recall,” Ed Morse, global head of commodity research at Citi, told Yahoo Finance.
Prior to the invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia was exporting much of its crude and petroleum products to Europe, with a much smaller portion going to China, India, and other Asian nations. By the end of 2022, that ratio had completely flipped.
“It has, from a markets’ perspective, created two markets, a transparent [oil] market, and a non-transparent market,” said Morse.
“Russian crude oil was simply reshuffled from old customers in Europe to new customers in Asia,” Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates recently wrote in a client note. “Europe’s energy divorce from Russia is nearly complete.”