Diesel imports since Morocco has shot at completely extraordinary levels. Between March and April 2025, Spanish ports have received 123,000 tons of diesel from the country governed by Mohamed VI, according to the official data of the Corporation of Strategic Reserves of Petroleum Products (CORES), organism protected by the Ministry for Ecological Transition. This means that in just two months they have arrived more than the 90,000 tons of the previous four years. Previously, Morocco exports diesel to Spain.
Sources of the sector point to which part of the diesel that arrives in Spain has Russian origin. However, they explain that it is impossible to control your entrance. As they detail, Morocco has not established any sanction on, which sought to carry out economic reprisals to drown Putin after his invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that is still alive three years later.
The data confirms that Morocco continues to buy Russian diesel. So far from 2025, in the Moroccan ports they have docked ships with more than one million tons of Russian diesel, which represents 25% of its imports, according to Vortexa data. This ship tracking platform used by the main tradersworldwide energy and media companies registered Russian diesel purchases. Specifically, 9% of the 6.5 million tons of 2024 diesel came from the country chaired by Vladimir Putin. A year earlier, in 2023, Morocco bought 1.62 million tons of this oil product from Russia.
In the sector they do not see economic logic in which a country that does not have refining capacity – it does not have operational refineting plants since 2016 – buy to re -export, since the cost would be above international market prices. Therefore, they consider that there must be some competitive advantage in that product. And there they see the possibility that the Russian diesel, which reaches less cost, is introduced into its storage systems, mixed and re -export to Spain already with certification of the North African country, without the footprint of which part could come from Russia.
This triangulation between countries to avoid economic reprisals is common in this and other sectors. Expert Fuentes point out that, for example, to avoid the reprisals that Algeria applied to Spain, some products were sold through third countries. The suspicion that diesel that comes from Morocco and other geographies has Russian origin in part is investigated by the Spanish authorities since at least 2023.
With the entry of the first buses loaded with diesel from Tangier,, without having managed to demonstrate that it came from the country punished by Brussels by the Ukrainian invasion. Specialized sources say that due to the similar viscosity of diesel worldwide it is very difficult to detect its origin, something that is easier for experts with oil.
In the fall of 2024, less than a year ago, the National Office of Fraud Research and the competence authorities opened an investigation, so they called the diesel mafia in Spain, a plot that moved 1.9 billion euros, according to the Chain ser.
The beginning of the plot was located in the sale of fuel, fundamentally diesel already refined, imported from “false flag” from Syria, Russia and Iran – all of them countries with export limits – but whose nationality is altered in Turkey and Morocco (it is pretended to have loaded, discharged and refined the diesel) so that the flag under which it is already mattered. Several of the companies that were accused of bringing Petroleum from Morocco for their price advantage as they are of Russian origin in 2023 or have been disabled or are currently ventured into judicial processes due to fraud.
The arrival of diesel to Spain from countries that historically did not export since the beginning of the war has grown markedly. In addition to the increase in sales of Morocco, the irruption of imports from Singapore and Türkiye stands out.
In mid -2023, when the first suspicions arrived that Russian diesel through Spain was entering through third countries, the then CEO of Exolum, Jorge Lanza, said that the Government had no way to confirm whether the Russian diesel that passes through Turkey ended in Spain.
This statement of the head of the former CLH, the hydrocarbons distributor in Spain with a presence in all ports, came after some of the top representatives of the sector denounced this situation that involves unfair competition for Spain.
“When an Indian refinery begins to buy Russian crude to, later, to manufacture diesel, it puts it in the European market in advantageous conditions that affect our industrial competition,” regretted the CEO of Repsol, Josu Jon Imaz, in February 2024. Repsol adds five refineries in Spain with some 1,000 workers in each plant. Moeve (Antigua Cepsa) has two and BP has one. This is a key economic source for places such as A Coruña, Bilbao, Puertollano, Tarragona, Cartagena, Huelva, Cádiz or Castellón. In addition, they are making an effort to decarbonize their operation, so the entry of diesel of illicit origin lasts its competitiveness.
In May 2023, Imaz already put the illegal arrival of Russian diesel to European countries like Spain on the Brussels table. The objective of the European Commission since the outbreak of the war was to apply economic sanctions with the aim of drowning the Russian economy and thus try to dissuade it in its military objectives, which have meant the death of hundreds of thousands of military and civilians in three years.
However, until now the Russian economy is enduring despite the enormous military expense that war is assuming. According to the IMF, Russia grew 4.1% in 2024, more than the US, the Eurozone or Spain and above the world average (3.3%). In April, it anticipated that this 2025 grows 1.5% and 0.9% E 2026. According to an analysis of the BBC, “despite Western restrictions on Russian oil and gas, hydrocarbon revenue flows have continued to reach state coffers. Petroleum ships now go to India and China.”
