Russia has found a way to cover its tracks in the face of Western sanctions by transporting its oil to a little-known port in Egypt and then to Saudi Arabia, where it can be exported around the world, Business Insider reports.

Bloomberg journalists were the first to discover that on the morning of July 24, a batch of Russian oil with a volume of about 700,000 barrels arrived at the Egyptian oil terminal El-Hamra on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Literally a few hours later, another vessel picked up a cargo that may have included some or all of Russian oil. Bloomberg notes that at El Hamra, a terminal operated by Egypt’s Western Desert Operating Petroleum, there are many opportunities to mix Russian oil with Egyptian oil to hide its origin.

The oil then goes to Egypt’s Ain Sokhna terminal in the Red Sea before being transported to ports in western Saudi Arabia. This ruse undermines Western efforts to reduce Russia’s energy export revenues so that Russian oil can then be transported from Saudi ports to the rest of the world.

In fact, Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman explained last week that Russia has a much bigger problem in securing the necessary imports than it does in continuing to export energy.

“Russia doesn’t have a problem selling its stuff, but it has a lot of trouble buying,” he said in a new editorial published in The New York Times, adding that it shows that sanctions against the Russian economy are working, and not as everyone expected.

The West introduced sanctions against Russian oil

European Union member states agreed on June 2 to impose an embargo on oil imported from Russia after more than a month of heated negotiations that saw Hungary, a country heavily dependent on Russian energy imports, get a temporary waiver.

The deal calls for a roughly 90 percent cut in oil imports from Russia by the end of 2022 to end funding for the Russian military machine.

US President Joe Biden personally announced on March 8 that the United States will ban all imports of Russian oil and natural gas produced in Russia. “The American people have mobilized to support the Ukrainian people, and we have made it as clear as possible that we will not participate in subsidizing Putin’s war,” Biden said at the time.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on February 28, just 4 days after the start of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation”, that his government was banning all imports of Russian oil.

However, unlike the EU member states, both Canada and the USA have significant oil reserves.

Despite President Vladimir Putin’s upbeat claims that Moscow would shift its energy exports east, particularly to China, Western analysts have identified several Russian oil tankers trying to conceal their final destination.

In June, for example, at least three Russian oil tankers turned off their transmitters near Portugal’s Azores to hide their final destination and other details of their route.

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