Research, investigations, compliance audits, news. Global energy markets. Contact us: [email protected]
Joined December 2023
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Some new-age compliance strategy by @TriconEnergy who blocks all inbound inquiries apart from a select list of friendlies?
Anyone ever seen a compliance policy like this?
European ports are still taking in hundreds of millions of euros in laundered Russian fuel despite an official ban.
The European Union banned products made from Russian crude, but high-risk cargoes continue landing in Italy, Cyprus, and Romania.
While India redirected its exports, refineries in Turkey and Georgia still process Russian crude for European buyers.
The loophole relies on weak paperwork. Facilities like Georgia's Kulevi plant run on Russian crude, make diesel, and ship it to Europe under clean third-country labels.
Russian oil will keep entering Western tanks until authorities inspect the refineries directly.
Does €31 million actually come close to covering the real cleanup cost of 50 million tonnes of waste?
🚨In June 2026, the Irish EPA forced Aughinish and Rusal to put €31 Million into an escrow account to help clean up the 450 acre caustic waste dump after Aughinish eventually closes.
The problem?
The 450 acre site consists of 50 million tonnes which works out at .62 cents to treat each and every tonne.
.62 cent!!
Over one hundred shadow tankers joined Russia's official flag registry after Western naval boardings and registry crackdowns in Panama cut false-flagged ships by half.
Moscow is now the registry of last resort, destroying any plausible deniability for its oil smuggling network.
TradeFlow Intelligence retweeted
🚗⛽️ Cars burn only about 1/4 of the world's oil.
Passenger vehicles take 27%.
Road freight 18%, aviation 7%, shipping 4%, rail and waterways 2%.
Transport overall is 58%.
The other 42% never touches a road.
Petrochemicals 15%.
Other industry 13%.
Buildings 8%.
Power 4%.
That's the limit of the EV story....for now
Switch every car on earth to electric and about 73% of oil use is still there.
Trucks, ships and trains run mostly on diesel-type fuels, the product squeezed hardest right now.
Plastics and chemicals keep growing whatever happens to cars.
themerchantsnews.substack.co…
Source: OPEC, IEA, UBS estimates
To infinity and beyond!
$6.30 a gallon! OMG
Diesel powers the tractors, freight trains, and trucks that bring food to your supermarket!
The grocery prices will rise soon...
Refineries in Turkey, India, and Georgia sent over 500 million euros in fuel to sanctioning countries in August. More than 300 million euros entered European Union ports including Italy, France, and Spain.
Here is the loophole:
Third-country refineries buy cheap Russian crude, process it into gasoline and diesel, and re-export it under a clean local label.
Georgia's Kulevi refinery ran entirely on Russian crude while supplying European buyers.
European leaders celebrate bans, but their own ports continue to buy Russian fuel and finance the invasion.
TradeFlow Intelligence retweeted
BREAKING: New high-resolution satellite imagery shows the pumping station on Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline burned out end to end, with the entire process area blackened and crude oil that escaped the site pooled across the desert beyond the perimeter, per Vantor imagery.
BREAKING: Repairs to Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline will take far longer than a month due to a lack of spare parts, with the pumping infrastructure catastrophically damaged and at least 8 locations on the pipe hit, per initial reports citing sources inside Saudi Arabia.
That leaves Saudi Arabia set to run out of crude oil stocks for export within five to seven days, taking around 4 million barrels per day, ~4% of global supply, off the market, per three industry sources to Reuters.
Some repaired points were struck again, using up the spares and undoing the work. Yanbu has about a week of stocks left on the kingdom's only export route that does not pass through Hormuz.
Ukraine is systematically hunting down every physical link in Russia's energy export chain
Hitting refineries starves the military of fuel, while hitting ports and tankers chokes export revenues.
Kyiv is shutting down the network paper rules failed to stop...
Russia's shadow fleet is a deliberate European failure!
Russia moves 2/3 of its Baltic oil on un-insured shadow tankers. Yet Europe holds all the cards to stop the trade tomorrow but doesn't do anything.
Most of these aging ships came directly from European owners who offloaded old hulls through shell companies for massive profits.
The Kremlin is not outsmarting the system. Our own governments are simply choosing not to use the power they have to stope them
Drones just hit a Russian weapons transport in the Mediterranean
We are far beyond the Black Sea...
The Lady Maria ship was carrying armored vehicles and military equipment along Russia's key maritime supply corridor.
For years, Moscow moved military cargo across the Mediterranean with zero resistance, relying on the limits of Western paper sanctions....
By striking Russian logistics thousands of miles from Ukrainian shores, the safe passage for Russian military shipments is officially gone.
Western sanctions forced Russian oil onto uninsured rust-buckets
Now 800,000 barrels of crude are leaking into an Omani whale reserve
The Cameroon-flagged Caroline Bezengi is still leaking months after an explosion.
No real insurance, zero accountability.
The ocean pays the price
Russia is becoming China’s shock absorber for Middle East supply disruptions. That gives Moscow something far more valuable than another buyer: a bigger role in China’s energy security.
China is increasingly relying on Russian oil amid the Iran War.
China’s imports of Russian oil rose by ~200,000 barrels per day in August, to ~1.6 million barrels per day, their highest since March.
This marks the 3rd consecutive monthly increase, bringing the cumulative gain over that stretch to ~500,000 barrels per day.
This is now above the levels seen in the last 4 months of 2025.
By comparison, China imported ~2.0 million barrels per day from Russia in February.
This comes as Middle East oil supplies have become more constrained and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, prompting Chinese refiners to turn increasingly to Russian crude.
Russian crude is increasingly filling the Middle East supply gap.
TradeFlow Intelligence retweeted
🚨🇷🇺🇸🇾 Russian convoy continues its journey toward the Eastern Mediterranean
The four vessels were spotted in the Strait of Sicily on September 1:
🔸 SPARTA, Ro-Ro cargo ship
🔸 ADMIRAL LEVCHENKO, Udaloy-class destroyer
🔸 GENERAL SKOBELEV, oil products tanker
🔸 AKADEMIK PASHIN, replenishment oiler
The convoy switched off its AIS shortly after passing Gibraltar. Port Said had been listed as the destination in AIS data before the vessels went dark, while Tartus or Tobruk remain possible destinations.
🚨🇷🇺🇸🇾 Russian convoy has just entered the Mediterranean sea
The four vessels have been spotted south of Spain.
🔸 SPARTA cargo ship
🔸 ADMIRAL LEVCHENKO destroyer
🔸 GENERAL SKOBELEV and AKADEMIK PASHIN tankers
The convoy switched off its AIS shortly after passing Gibraltar. AKADEMIK PASHIN had already used the same tactic last June, sailing through the Mediterranean with its AIS disabled.
After two months of absence from the Mediterranean, Russia is back. The convoy still indicates Port Said as its declared destination, but Tartus appears to be the more likely destination.
Norway seized a Russian vessel in the Arctic
It helps Ukraine collect billions for stolen energy assets.
The move enforces a Hague court ruling ordering Moscow to pay over four billion dollars for gas infrastructure seized during the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
This follows similar seizures in Finland and France
Kyiv systematically tracks down Russian state property across Western jurisdictions.
Ukraine is no longer waiting for reparations
Shell is exploring a sale of its American chemicals business for $8 billion
ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, and Kuwait Petroleum have submitted bids.
The price tag represents a steep discount. Shell spent $14 billion its chemical plants
European energy majors are quietly shedding industrial assets to refocus entirely on high-margin oil and gas trading
Another refinery is on fire
The plant processes 17 million tons of crude yearly to fuel Moscow.
Kyiv is dismantling the energy infrastructure that powers Russia
