Open Letter to Bloomberg: "Russian oil shipments shift to western tankers as prices slump"
- Matthew Parish
- Apr 13
- 2 min read
Dear Sir, Madam,
Your article captioned above, website address below, contains a logic I cannot follow.
In the article you say "Urals prices have been below, or close to, the $60 threshold since the end of January, before slumping alongside international benchmarks in the first days of April”.
You then provide a graph (the second in your article) indicating that the Urals price as of two days ago is only slightly more than US$50.
You are quite wrong. Two days ago (Friday), the last day for which I can find reliable data, Urals spot price was US$58.07. The lowest it has ever fallen in recent times was US$57.60, on 10 April. Before that it was well above US$60. My source:
I fail to understand how so small a dip (in just a few days before your article) below the US$60 mark has caused a stretch in Euro-Atlantic shipping rates as Russian oil exporters move to the use of western vessels in accordance with western sanctions relief at oil prices of under US$60.
Could you be so kind as to inform me of the source of your data on the price of Urals crude? Also please explain some of the other information apparently contained in the second graph in your article, as I do not understand it. What is the significance of the difference between the dark blue lines and the light blue lines? And when you say that a dark blue spot indicates “Days when western ships loaded”, how many ships were loaded on each day and from where? This is important: if no ships were loaded on one day, it might have been due to weather (Russian ports are notoriously weather prone, particularly in April), and was compensated for by multiple tankers loading on the next weather working day.
If you will forgive my saying so, the second graph in your article is extremely confusing.
The first graph in your article, entitled "Western tankers grab a bigger share of Russian trade as oil prices fall", is not just confusing but positively misleading. That is because what it actually indicates is a substantial decline in the use of Russian shadow fleet vessels, as western intelligence and interception capacities get better, rather than a significant increase in western insured vessels in moving Urals grade oil which has actually fallen substantially in April 2025 compared to prior months. Indeed that graph might be taken to show an increase in the effectiveness of western sanctions, as less Russian oil is moved by ship, rather than any changes in supply and demand for oil tankers due to a change in the price of Urals crude.
I would also be most interested in how you obtained data on the number and type of vessels loading Urals crude from Russian ports, as the only reliable data on this subject is with the Russian government and western intelligence agencies,
Yours faithfully,
Matthew Parish
Executive Chairman
Ukraine Development Trust