Russia has boosted oil exports from the major eastern port of Kozmino to Asian countries by about a fifth, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The facility is close to the city of Nakhodka, which is about 80km south of the regional capital, Vladivostok.

According to the news agency, Russia’s Transneft has increased the amount of crude pumped to Kozmino via its main Asian oil route, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd). Transneft has reportedly used chemical additives to speed up oil flows, the unnamed sources said.

They specified that the additional supplies will allow Kozmino to increase overall loadings to some 900,000 bpd in the months ahead, from an average of around 750,000 bpd so far this year. In 2021, Kozmino reportedly loaded about 720,000 bpd (35.1 million tons).

ESPO oil exports via Kozmino are projected to reach an all-time high of around 880,000 bpd in July, two of the sources said. The ESPO pipeline, which connects Russia’s Siberian oil fields to Kozmino and Chinese buyers by land, has an overall capacity of 1.64 million bpd.

Moscow earlier said it hopes to reroute westbound energy exports to the east, to meet Asia’s surging demand. Asian countries became the largest importers of Russian oil for the first time in April 2022, according to Bloomberg.

Chinese and Indian companies have stepped up purchases of Russian crude over the past three months, eager to take advantage of discounted rates. Statistics show that Russian oil exports to India jumped by nearly 25 times in May compared to the same period of last year.

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