Turkey imports crude from Brazil after Russian oil ban

Turkey’s largest oil refiner Tupras is set to receive a cargo of Itapu crude early next month, its first such purchase from Brazil, according to a source, and ship tracking data.

Tupras last month said it had stopped buying Russian crude after the US announced new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry on January 10.

The cargo of Itapu crude, around 1 million barrels, was loaded onto the Suezmax tanker Joao Candido on March 12, according to tracking data from Kpler and LSEG.

It is scheduled to arrive at Turkey’s Izmit port, where Tupras operates a 225,800-barrel-per-day capacity oil refinery, on April 3-4, the data show.

Tupras did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the reason for the purchase. Brazil’s Petrobras confirmed to Reuters that it sold the cargo.

Petrobras “continues to develop new markets to ensure the flow of the growing production of Brazilian oil to profitable destinations,” the company’s statement said.

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The Kpler shipping data that goes back to 2013 shows that neither of Tupras’ two refineries, one at Izmit and another at Izmir, has previously received Brazilian crude.

Itapu is a medium-sweet crude with an API gravity of 29 and a sulphur content of 0.25 percent, according to data seen by Reuters.

Russia’s Urals is medium-sour, meaning it has a similar density to Itapu at about 31.7 API, but is more sulphurous at 1.7 percent, according to data provided by S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Tupras had become one of the biggest importers of Russian crude since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, receiving around 305,000 bpd of the grade in 2024 according to Kpler.

Itapu is closer in quality to other medium-sweet grades that Tupras occasionally buys, such as Nigeria’s Forcados, a Mediterranean crude trader said.