European oil receipts boosting Putin’s war chest by $285m a day, study finds

Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine is being bolstered by $285m (£217m) in oil payments made every day by European countries, new analysis by the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank has found.

Russia received $104bn from its crude, petrol and diesel exports to Europe last year, more than twice the $43bn it took from gas shipments, the study estimated.

The analysis by the European clean-transport NGO was published shortly before the US and UK moved to ban Russian oil imports, and as Shell announced plans to shut down its Russian petrol stations and oil spot purchases.

"Gas is understandably a worry, but it is oil that is funding Putin's war," said William Todts, T&E's director. "Relying on it leaves Europeans dangerously exposed to rising prices in an increasingly uncertain world."

Europe's dependence on Russia for about a quarter of its crude oil imports has helped to spur US pressure for an import ban, even as Brent crude prices have surged as high as $139 a barrel.

Russia's deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, said on Monday that any rejection of Russian oil would have "catastrophic consequences" and could send prices as high as $300 a barrel.

Europe imported more than 200m tonnes of oil from Russia each year between 2004 and 2017, even increasing its purchases in the two years after Russia seized Crimea in 2014.

The energy stranglehold held by Russia and other countries with poor human rights records underlines the urgent need to change to clean energy solutions, T&E says.

"We should not simply swap Russian oil for Saudi oil," Todts said. "It's time to greatly improve transport efficiency and turbocharge the electrification of transport to drive down our oil consumption."

Russia is the source of almost four in every five oil barrels in Slovakia and two-thirds of those in Poland, Lithuania and Finland, while in Germany 29.7% of oil products come from Russia, the study says. The UK and Italy import about 12% of their oil and petroleum products from Russia, while in Portugal the figure is just 4%.

Restrictions on Russian oil imports were absent from an EU energy strategy launched in Brussels today, which instead focused on gas supply storage and diversification.

Even so, "nothing is off the table", the EU's green deal commissioner, Frans Timmermans, said on Monday. "The barbarism that Putin is now showing in Ukraine needs to be met with resolve, and also with measures that hurt him, even if they might hurt us as well."

Economic pain from an embargo would be felt keenly in Germany, Europe's biggest Russian oil importer, which paid out $23.6bn to Moscow last year, followed by Poland ($14.7bn) and the Netherlands ($11.4bn).