With the war in Ukraine, new trade routes are emerging. Tunisia has thus become a transit point for Russian naphtha, a petroleum derivative used in petrochemicals. And this is for the benefit of South Korea in particular.
Rolling with Russian oil in the United States, despite the sanctions, is legally possible if the crude is refined elsewhere than in Russia, in Italy for example. The story had been reported in the spring by The Wall Street Journal. In the same spirit, South Korea has found a way to import, without appearing to do so, Russian naphtha.
The Asian country is the world’s largest importer of naphtha, a material that serves as a base for petrochemicals. Last year, a quarter of South Korea’s imports of this liquid came from Russia, nearly 600,000 tons. But since the war, these flows have dried up and have been replaced by naphtha from Tunisia, a country that does not produce it.
Export naphtha without producing it
In October, Tunisia sent 82,000 tons of naphtha to South Korea and 274,000 tons should be sent in November, according to data collected by the Reuters agency.
If Tunisia manages to export so much, it is obviously because it has started importing large volumes of naphtha from Russia. Nine cargo ships transported 410,000 tons between August and November, from the port of Novorossiysk to the port of Skhira.
If Russian sources explain that Tunisia is a place of storage while waiting for prices to go up, the data proves that the naphtha is intended for re-export to South Korea in particular. One of the carriers, Coral Energy, has also admitted that it has no storage capacity on Tunisian territory.
Asia structurally short of naphtha
This new route allows South Korea to avoid drawing too much attention to its Russian supplies while continuing to benefit from a favorable price, because Russian naphtha is, like Russian oil, sold at a lower price. Hence the appetite of Asia is structurally short for this petroleum product which is used to manufacture ethylene and propylene used in the manufacture of plastics.
