Trade sources said on Monday that a shipping unit of France’s Total Energies has temporarily leased a tanker to load Abu Dhabi crude in early May to Europe, in a rare move.
The sources added that the arbitrage process for Middle East crude to Europe began after European buyers avoided Russian oil in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
And “Total” said last month that it would not renew contracts to supply Russian gas and crude oil to the German refinery Leuna, and that it intended to replace them with imports from Saudi Arabia and Poland.
The Leona refinery operates with a production capacity of 240 thousand barrels per day, which is fed with Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline.
Total clarified that the termination of its long-term contractual supplies means that the last of its oil products will be imported from Russia by the end of this year.