Methodology

We use a variety of data sources and methods to generate our trackers and reports. This page should provide information on what data sources we use and describe our data methodology.

Flows

To gather information about fossil fuel flows for different commodities, we use a variety of data sources which differ depending on commodity type, transport type, and location. The table below contains a summary of the data sources and more details are available about these data sources in the relevant sections below.

For datasets affected with a significant lag (for example, Eurostat and Customs), we assume constant flows since the latest available data.

	Crude oil	Oil products	LPG	Fossil Gas	LNG	Coal
Seaborne	Kpler	Kpler	MarineTraffic + Datalastic	N/A	Kpler	Kpler
Pipeline (Europe)	Eurostat	Eurostat	N/A	ENTSOG	N/A	N/A
Pipeline (Turkey)	N/A	N/A	N/A	Eurostat	N/A	N/A
Pipeline (China)	Kpler + Customs	N/A	N/A	Customs	N/A	N/A

Seaborne

We track ship voyages between Russian ports and ports in other countries using data from two sources:

• All commodities but LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas): Trades and flows data from Kpler.
• LPG: AIS (automatic identification system) and shipment data from MarineTraffic.com, and Datalastic.

Kpler

We use Kpler to track the majority of seaborne fossil fuel exports from Russia, excluding seaborne LPG. Kpler uses a variety of sources and metrics, including historic and live AIS data, customs data, and implements their own models to estimate volumes and commodities exported on each shipment.

Kpler provides us with data regarding the exports of Russian fossil fuels in trades. A trade has a registered buyer and seller and may involve multiple ships if there is a ship-to-ship transfer of goods. A ship’s voyage may be split between multiple trades if the ship(s) load or offload at different locations.

Each trade includes details about the volume and the type of commodity.

We use the data on shipment volumes to estimate the value of the traded Russian fossil fuel, as detailed in the Pricing section below. We also collect data on ships insurance and ownership that we match to the Kpler shipment data as described in the Insurance and Ownership section below.

We prefer Kpler over direct AIS providers as Kpler provides more details and analysis about shipments and trades within their data. For more details on this, see the <link to change web page>.

MarineTraffic.com and Datalastic

We track ship voyages between Russian ports and ports in other countries using data from MarineTraffic.com and Datalastic, derived from ship location (AIS) data that ships transmit. We use AIS data to track exports of seaborne LPG only in our counters and trackers.

A voyage consists of a ship taking on cargo and departing from a Russian port, arriving in a non-Russian port and discharging its cargo. More complex trips such as loading cargo from both a Russian and a non-Russian port are excluded. The amount of LPG transported in a shipment is estimated based on the cargo capacity (deadweight tonnage) of the ships, adjusted by the average ratio of ship capacity to reported customs volume. In December 2021, we validated this approach by aggregating the cargo capacity of shipments in the latest month with complete trade data and compared these values to the reported export volumes.

Pipeline (Europe)

We collect data from ENTSOG (European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas) and Eurostat for pipeline transmission in Europe. ENTSOG data tracks pipeline gas export volumes. It is available on a daily and near real-time basis. To attribute the pipeline data to each country within the pipeline network, we collect data from ENTSOG on flows between countries, at transmission interconnections for every single day. We then assume that on any given day, a country is a perfect ‘gas mixer’, that is, that all gas gets mixed before being consumed and/or re-exported. This allows us to attribute Russian gas consumption to countries that do not have direct connection with Russia. Read more about it in our post about our change in pipeline gas attribution methodology.

Pipeline (Turkey)

Pipeline gas data for Turkey is obtained from Eurostat. Projection using seasonality is applied to the latest missing months.

Pipeline (China)

Pipeline oil data for China is estimated by deducting seaborne shipments (estimated from AIS providers) from total imports as reported by Chinese customs.

We acquire pipeline gas data between Russia and China directly from China’s customs records. Like other data sources that may experience some delay, we make the assumption of consistent gas flows based on the most recent data point available.

Pricing

Fossil fuels are sold on a variety of contracts including fixed-price, indexed to average oil prices and in other cases contracts can be indexed to other spot prices. This means that the revenue received by the exporter is not directly equal to the current spot price. To develop our tracker, we therefore rely on some assumptions. 

To estimate prices of fossil fuel trades in 2022, we first derive historical monthly average prices for imports from Russia to the EU from Eurostat, and to the rest of the world from UN COMTRADE, since the trade values are indicated both in volume and monetary terms. We then fit models between these historical prices and average monthly spot prices for the current and previous months (commodity pricing includes: Brent crude oil, Title Transfer Facility gas, Newcastle steam coal, Asian LNG, Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp coal). Prices are collected from OilPrice.com, Energy Information Administration and Intercontinental Exchange; their websites models’ are built for main trading partners individually, and for the rest of the world as a whole too.

After the start of the invasion, the reluctance of many traders to take cargoes from Russia has driven discounted pricing of Russian oil. We apply the discount between Brent and Urals crude prices to crude oil exports to Europe and the discount between Brent and ESPO (Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil) to exports travelling to Asia.

From December 5, 2022 onwards, we cap the price of crude oil carried aboard tankers owned or insured in the price cap coalition countries to the level of the price cap. For information about how we get details of insurance and ownership, see the section Insurance and Ownership below.

Insurance and ownership

We use data from Equasis and insurance providers directly to identify vessel owners and P&I information, building a database of historical insurance data. For ownership, we use data available in Equasis. For insurance, first we check Equasis to identify the P&I provider and then we get the insurance start date directly from the insurance provider.

References

Eurostat: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/

ENTSO-G transparency platform: https://transparency.entsog.eu/ 

MarineTraffic: https://www.marinetraffic.com/

Datalastic: https://datalastic.com/

UN COMTRADE https://comtrade.un.org/Data/ 

Equasis: https://www.equasis.org/

Kpler: https://www.kpler.com/