The Baltic Chokepoint for Global Oil

Oil tanker volumes out of Russia's Baltic ports are down after Ukrainian drone attacks

If there’s one lesson from the war with Iran, it’s that it doesn’t take much to shut down oil tankers that have to transit something like the Strait of Hormuz. The mere threat of an attack is enough to shut things down and I’m sure this lesson isn’t lost on the poor people of Ukraine who are now battling Russian invaders for the fifth year in a row. Roughly half of Russia’s seaborne oil exits ports in the Baltic and has to transit the Danish Straits, which are much narrower than the Strait of Hormuz and therefore far easier to shut. At the end of the day, it was up to the EU to do this and the political willingness to take this step - admittedly a scary one - is lacking. The softening up of the maritime services ban in the 20th sanctions package - for which we’re still waiting - is just the latest illustration that the EU lacks the will to act. At the root of all this is a governance crisis, which prevents the EU from becoming a geopolitical force.

So Ukraine is taking matters into its own hands. Recent drone attacks on Russia’s two oil hubs in the Baltic - Primorsk and Ust-Luga - look like they’re weighing on export volumes. So far, Ukraine is still holding back, because it’s mostly targeted storage and not (yet) pipes and valves needed to fill up berthed tankers. These attacks are a clear demonstration that Ukraine could impose a blockade of its own, taking Russia’s Baltic ports offline. That gives Ukraine leverage in whatever comes next.

The charts above give an update to joint work with Ben Harris at Brookings and show monthly data on oil tanker volumes out of Russia’s ports in the Black Sea (top left), the Baltic (top right), the Pacific (bottom left) and the Artic (bottom right). For the Black Sea, I exclude the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal near Novorossiysk as this handles mostly Kazakh oil. Underlying data are daily tanker departures from the AHOY function in Bloomberg. I aggregate things up to create monthly totals. The last data point is for April 6, so the April observation is grossed up by a factor of five (30/6) to create a monthly total.

US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil - announced in Oct. 2025 - caused a fear factor in global markets, making Indian buyers in particular reluctant to keep buying Russian oil. You can see this play out in all four charts, with volumes ratcheting down after Oct. 2025. My grossed up April number takes another step down, in contrast to Black Sea and Pacific exports, which are up and flat, respectively. This contrast suggests something idiosyncratic is going on in the Baltic and the obvious candidate is recent Ukrainian drone attacks. As I note above, these attacks spared critical infrastructure, sparing pipes and valves needed to fill berthed ships. But the signal is clear. Ukraine has signaled it’s able and willing to shut down Russia’s Baltic oil exports, something the EU should have done four years ago.