[War & Business] 'Blending' Mocking Sanctions Against Russia

On the 23rd (local time), an oil tanker docked at the port of Ventspils, Latvia. The oil mixed with Russian crude and sold in the international waters near Ventspils port is called "Latvia Blending." [Image source= Reuters·Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Recently, the term ‘blending’ has been pointed out as the biggest loophole in the US and Western sanctions against Russia. Literally meaning ‘to mix,’ this term refers to the practice of oil companies secretly mixing Russian oil at sea and selling it. This method exploits the fact that if the proportion of Russian oil does not exceed 50%, it is excluded from sanctions.

Originally, blending is known to have originated from British tea smugglers in the 18th century. At that time, the British government monopolized the tea trade with China through the public company, the East India Company, which sold tea at high prices and funded the British royal family and political circles. As a result, ordinary people who could not afford expensive tea had no choice but to drink smuggled tea.

To avoid government surveillance, smugglers added cheap spices or herbs to Chinese tea and disguised the origin by claiming it was a different product. Various herbal teas, including Earl Grey with Arabian bergamot spice, were born this way.

Although tea blending was on a relatively small scale and the British government turned a blind eye, the real problem was coffee, the biggest competitor to tea. At that time, coffee came from the Spanish West Indies, an enemy of Britain, so the British government imposed a coffee ban. Furthermore, the East India Company influenced Parliament to completely block coffee imports not only to Britain but also to the American colonies.

However, as sanctions prolonged and the British government imposed taxes on tea to overcome financial difficulties, American merchants began so-called ‘coffee blending’ with Dutch smugglers in the Caribbean. Coffee blending involved mixing coffee from various origins so that the source of the coffee could not be identified.

Dutch smugglers mixed coffee from the West Indies with coffee from Dutch-controlled Indonesia, which was not subject to sanctions at the time. As blended coffee arrived, Americans started adding water to neutralize the different flavors, which is said to be the origin of today’s ‘Americano.’ The British government strongly opposed this coffee blending, which became a catalyst for the American War of Independence.

Thus, blending, boasting a tradition of hundreds of years, remains a primary means to evade sanctions and embargoes today. Currently, Russian oil is still supplied to the market under names such as ‘Latvia blending’ and ‘Netherlands blending,’ depending on the blending region.

Although it may seem like a distant European issue, the most troublesome blending-specialized country in the international community is North Korea. Various weapons, including North Korea’s ballistic missiles, are mixed with weapons from other countries and transferred to Iran and Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. Especially after the Ukraine crisis, as the international community worries about weapons moving from North Korea to Russia, the responsibility of our government to monitor this is expected to become heavier.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.