Due to sanctions, Turkey's largest refineries began to buy more oil not from Russia – Reuters

Turkey's largest oil refineries are buying more oil from sources other than Russia in response to the latest Western sanctions against Moscow, said Reuters, citing two informed interlocutors and several industry sources.

Turkey is one of the main buyers of Russian oil, along with China and India. Now, Turkish refineries are taking measures similar to those of are made in India, which indicates the impact of efforts by the United States, European Union, and the United Kingdom to reduce sales of Russian oil, the proceeds of which are used to finance the war against Ukraine.

One of Turkey's largest refineries, Turkey Aegean Refinery (STAR), owned by Azerbaijan's SOCAR, has recently purchased four batches of oil from Iraq, Kazakhstan and other non-Russian producers, which will be delivered in December, sources said.

According to Reuters estimates, this amounts to 77,000 to 129,000 barrels per day of non-Russian supplies, depending on the size of the cargo, and means that SOCAR will use less oil from Russia.

The analytical company Kpler points out that supplies from Russia accounted for almost all of the oil that came to the STAR refinery in October and September, amounting to about 210,000 barrels per day.

Two sources said that one of the four cargoes was a Kazakh shipment of KEBCO grade, which is of the same quality as Russian Urals oil. Previously, the SOCAR plant imported only one shipment of oil from Kazakhstan in 2025 and none in 2024.

Meanwhile, another major Turkish refiner, Tupras, is increasing its purchases of non-Russian crude oil grades that are similar in quality to Urals, such as from Iraq, two sources said, without providing further details.

Tupras, which owns two large refineries in Turkey, is also likely to stop importing Russian oil to one of its refineries soon to be able to continue exporting fuel to Europe without violating the new EU sanctions, the two sources said. According to them, the company will continue to process Russian oil at another facility.

SOCAR declined to comment, and Tupras did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

According to Kpler, from January to October, Turkey imported about 669,000 barrels of oil per day, of which 317,000, or 47%, were from Russia. Last year, during the same period, oil imports amounted to 580,000 barrels per day, of which 333,000 were from Russia.

• on October 30, Bloomberg reported that after the Ukrainian strikes and increased sanctions, Russia's oil exports fell to its lowest level since the beginning of its full-scale war against Ukraine.