Russia is still making money from oil imported from Belgium, despite an EU ban on the purchase and import of Russian crude oil in force since December 2022, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed.
Belgium stopped importing oil from Russia last year, but Russian oil still accounts for a fifth of imports in 2022. However, a tenth of the crude oil that Belgium did import in 2023 flowed through a pipeline that Russia also earns from.
The Federal Economy Ministry confirmed that this is oil from Kazakhstan, which flows through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's (CPC) 1,500-kilometre pipeline to a terminal on the Black Sea, Knack and De Tijd report.
From there, the oil is exported by large ocean-going tankers, including to the port of Rotterdam, from where it is pumped by pipeline to Antwerp.
'Lifeline of Putin's regime'
The CPC pipeline has been operational since 2001 and is owned by the Russian and Kazakh states, Lukoil and Rosneft, and four western oil companies (Shell, Exxon, Chevron and ENI).
Both through taxes and dividends to Russian state-owned companies that hold substantial shares in the CPC, President Vladimir Putin's regime has already earned more than €1 billion from the pipeline since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022. The country currently earns €665 million a year from the pipeline.
Lobbyists have kept the CPC pipeline exempt from Western sanctions. Ten weeks into the war, a top ExxonMobil executive urged the European Commission to spare the pipeline. And since the start of the war, Kazakhstan has already paid a US lobbying firm nearly $4 million to keep the pipeline sanctions-free.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the European Parliament on Tuesday that oil was "the lifeline of Putin's regime". However, imposing sanctions on the CPC pipeline is not as easy as it sounds, according to Belgian diplomats. They fear the geopolitical consideration that sanctions would push Kazakhstan even more into the arms of the Russians.
