U.S. refiners have turned to Russian oil and petroleum products to fill the gap that sanctioned Venezuelan crude and drastically reduced OPEC shipments have left in U.S. imports, despite the energy standoff between the United States and Russia. In 2020, the U.S. imported more oil and refined products from Russian than from Saudi Arabia, with Russia’s share of American oil exports at a record-high 7 percent, Bloomberg News has estimated based on customs and EIA data. Russia mostly displaced the market previously held by Venezuela—now unable to sell its heavy oil to U.S. refiners because of the American sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s regime. U.S. oil imports from Russia exceeded last year even the imports from OPEC’s top producer and de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, which—after briefly flooding the U.S. market with its crude in April 2020—drastically cut shipments to the most transparent market to help inventory drawdowns amid collapsing […]