Turkish Refineries Switch to Raw Materials from Kazakhstan 0 11

After the introduction of American sanctions against the Russian energy sector, Turkey's largest refineries have started to purchase more oil from other sources, Reuters reports, citing two sources directly familiar with the situation and several industry sources.

According to them, one of Turkey's largest refineries — SOCAR Turkey Aegean Refinery (STAR), owned by the Azerbaijani company SOCAR — recently purchased four batches of crude oil for delivery in December from Iraq, Kazakhstan, and other non-Russian producers. One of the four batches is Kazakh oil of the KEBCO grade, which is similar in quality to Russian Urals.

Reuters specifies that the volume of this purchase is between 77,000 and 129,000 barrels per day and "means that SOCAR will use less Russian crude oil." According to the French analytics company Kpler, in September-October 2025, this refinery processed about 210,000 barrels of oil per day, and almost all of it was Russian. The Kazakh brand KEBCO was purchased by the enterprise only once this year and not at all last year.

Another major Turkish refinery — Tupras — has also increased its purchases of oil similar in quality to Urals, including from Iran. Two sources from Reuters believe that the company owning this refinery, also named Tupras, will soon completely abandon the use of Russian oil at one of its plants to avoid sanctions and maintain fuel exports to Europe.

Tupras has already diversified its crude oil supplies this year, purchasing its first batch from Brazil, and is currently expecting the arrival of a second batch of Angolan oil, which is due to arrive in early November.

According to Kpler, from January to October, Turkey imported about 669,000 barrels of crude oil per day, of which 317,000 (47%) was Russian oil. In the same period in 2024, the country imported 580,000 barrels of oil per day, of which 333,000 barrels were from Russia.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that the country's president, Donald Trump, signed an order imposing extensive sanctions against the Russian energy sector. All organizations directly or indirectly owned by Rosneft and Lukoil by at least 50% fell under the restrictions. Soon after, the European Union banned any transactions with Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.