Global oil price shocks from geopolitical disruptions rarely pass directly into Southeast European markets. Instead, they filter through refinery margins and inventory management, shaping local prices in ways that reflect operational and logistical realities rather than crude prices alone. When global supply risk rises, European refiners often widen cracks preemptively, anticipating tighter product balances. SEE […]

The EU’s scrutiny of Russia’s shadow tanker fleet has an indirect but significant impact on southeast European oil markets. By tightening effective tanker supply on Mediterranean and Black Sea routes, even vessels not directly sanctioned face higher costs and operational constraints due to insurance, vetting, and charter availability. Freight becomes the primary transmission mechanism of

The latest EU sanctions targeting individual oil traders and facilitators connected to Russian exports do not create new legal constraints for the southeast European oil market. Instead, they reprice execution risk, transforming sanctions from binary compliance events into continuous variables embedded in basis, freight, and counterparty optionality. Russian-origin barrels, whether crude or refined products, have