Some of the petroleum products contracted by the US Department of Defense through suppliers in Greece and Turkey may have Russian origin, despite Western sanctions that set price caps on them, the Washington Post revealed in an extensive investigative piece yesterday.

The quantities of fuel oil shipped from Dortyol to Motor Oil Hellas, and the industry practice of mixing products of different origins as they are stored, ensure a large amount of product from Russia in the mix, according to industry experts with deep knowledge of oil flows and sanctions rules who reviewed the shipping and trade data at the request of The Post, WP wrote.

CEETV reminds that Motor Oil Hellas is the owner of two of the biggest commercial TV channels in Greece, Alpha TV (50%) and Star Channel (100%), controlled by the Vardinogiannis family. Interestingly enough, the WP story has received little to no coverage in the Greek press so far.

“I don’t see any other possible conclusion than Russian fuel is going to Motor Oil Hellas,” said Robert Auers, a refinery modeler and refined fuels market analyst at the research firm RBN Energy, who examined the Post findings.

The Post used shipping and other records to track the flow of fuel oil, a category of materials used to make products the Pentagon buys for ships and planes. The Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group based in Washington, surfaced some of those shipping records while preparing a report with information from Data Desk, a consulting firm that investigates fossil fuel companies.

Over the past two years, Dortyol received 5.4 million barrels of fuel oil by sea, all but 1.9 million from Russia, according to shipping records and trade data from Refinitiv, a financial-data firm that specializes in commodities markets. Since the European Union sanctions took effect in February, Russian shipments to Dortyol totaled 2.7 million barrels, or more than 69 percent of the fuel oil shipped by sea to Dortyol during that period.

Also since February, The Post found, Dortyol has shipped 7 million barrels of fuel oil overall, of which 4.2 million barrels went to Motor Oil Hellas. Those shipments accounted for at least 56% of all the fuel oil the Greek refinery received by ship.

The precise amount of Russian-origin fuel oil in the products the Pentagon purchases could not be determined. Those products are refined using multiple ingredients that cannot all be tracked through production.

It also could not be determined whether, at some point during its journey, the fuel oil from Russia was relabeled as having come from another country. The documents that describe the provenance of an oil shipment, known as certificates of origin, are not public records.

Motor Oil Hellas said in a statement that the company “does not buy, process or trade Russian oil or products. All its imports are certified of non sanctioned origin.” The company did not respond to specific questions about the nature of that certification, or whether it is taking any steps to ensure it is accurate, WP noted.

Motor Oil Hellas, a publicly traded firm, has been a key Pentagon supplier for years. Since the 2019 fiscal year, the Defense Logistics Agency has paid the company more than $1.1 billion, making it one of the top 10 contractors with the agency among providers of fuel and oil products, according to the firm Deltek, which tracks U.S.-government procurement data. A $479 million purchase order was finalized in May.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), which advocates for government transparency and whistleblower protections, shared its initial findings with The Post after tracking several months of commodities data. As this story was published, the group posted its own findings in a report titled “The Pentagon is Buying Fuel Made With Russian Oil,” written by investigator Jason Paladino.

Most of the additional records The Post used for this reporting were sourced from Refinitiv and Kpler, a platform that tracks global energy commodities. Together, the records show when products left a particular terminal, who owned the goods, which vessels they were shipped on and where they were unloaded. The Post also reviewed satellite imagery and ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic to confirm port visits by vessels.