Russia has begun commercial crude exports from Rosneft’s Vostok Oil project, putting barrels on the water from its new Arctic terminal after years of sanctions, investor exits, and construction delays.
Three ice-class tankers loaded about 250,000 metric tons of crude from the Bukhta Sever terminal on the Taimyr Peninsula in September. Two carried the oil to Murmansk for ship-to-ship transfer. A third headed for Asia through the Northern Sea Route. A fourth tanker is waiting to load.
Industry sources expect exports to average about 150,000 barrels per day this year, equal to just 7.5% of the 2 million bpd once envisioned for Vostok.
Much of that initial supply is coming from Rosneft’s mature Vankor fields. Rosneft says development of northern fields, including Payakha, could lift exports to around 600,000 bpd in the second half of 2027 and 1 million bpd by 2030.
Vostok covers 13 fields holding an estimated 50 billion barrels of low-sulfur crude. A dedicated 790-kilometer pipeline connects the development to Bukhta Sever, where Rosneft plans a 100-tank storage hub.
Trafigura and Vitol pulled out of Vostok after Western sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2022, taking two major international investors with them. Rosneft had to replace that money with domestic financing and asset sales, and commercial exports slipped years behind schedule.
Those barrels are entering a market where one of Russia’s biggest customers is already buying less. India cut Russian crude imports 16.5% in August to about 2.1 million bpd, and preliminary Kpler data puts September at 1.9 million bpd. A new U.S. sanctions law provides for tariffs of up to 100% on goods from major buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Russia produced about 9.9 million bpd of oil and condensate in 2025, compared with nearly 13.6 million bpd in the United States.
Bukhta Sever gives those new barrels an Arctic export path as well. One of the first commercial cargoes is already sailing east through the Northern Sea Route, away from Russia’s Baltic and Black Sea oil infrastructure that has been hit by Ukrainian drone attacks.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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