LONDON (Reuters) – Turkey’s largest oil refiner Tupras has stopped buying Russian crude because of U.S. sanctions announced on January 10 against Russian energy companies and tankers carrying Russian oil, the company said on a call following an earnings report.
“With the latest sanctions imposed, we have stopped buying Urals and we will receive the final cargoes during February,” said Levent Bayar, Tupras executive director of investor relations.
It was not clear if Tupras would stop refined product imports from Russia. Tupras did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tupras had become one of the biggest importers of Russian crude since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian oil represented 65% of Turkey’s total oil imports in January-November 2024, according to data from Turkey’s energy regulator.
Last year Tupras imported 225,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, the highest on record and up from 178,000 bpd in 2023, according to shipping data analytics firm Kpler. Tupras’s Russian crude imports nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022 at 170,000 bpd, Kpler data showed.
Tupras on Tuesday reported a full-year net profit of 18.32 billion lira ($505.1 million) versus a profit of 77.35 billion a year before.
The company, owned by Istanbul-based conglomerate Koc Holding, owns four oil refineries including Izmit and Izmir, two of the country’s largest plants.
Tupras’s Izmir oil refinery, with total crude processing capacity of 241,500 bpd, received its latest Urals cargo on February 11, according to Kpler.
($1 = 36.2680 lira)
(Reporting by Enes Tunagur; Editing by David Holmes and Jan Harvey)
