Sneak routes and cheat loading

Tiny Egyptian harbour is a transshipment point for Russian oil.

Western sanctions are obviously very inventive. A cargo of about 700,000 barrels of Russian oil, or about 112,000 tonnes, was delivered to Egypt's El Hamra oil terminal on the Mediterranean coast in the early morning of 24 July. A few hours later, another ship picked up another cargo from the port that may have contained some or all of the Russian barrels, according to ship tracking data observed by Bloomberg. The destination of the cargo is therefore difficult to trace, contributing to the increasing opacity of Russian oil shipments.

El Hamra, which is operated by the Egyptian Western Desert Operating Petroleum Co., has six storage tanks with a capacity of 1.5 million barrels of crude oil and not a single fixed berth. It appears to be a floating mooring for loading and unloading. Right next door is a holiday resort with a disused marina. The terminal was built to handle crude oil produced in Egypt's western desert.

Egypt is already used by Russia as a transit route for fuel oil. It is unclear whether El Hamra is a one-off event or whether the port will be used more frequently for Russian oil flows in the future. In the past, tankers carrying Russian crude oil have already carried out ship-to-ship transfers off the North African city of Ceuta and, more recently, in the mid-Atlantic. These are all dangerous manoeuvres outside coastal areas.