Russia’s oil shipments to North Korea reportedly doubled in the first half of this year over the same period last year despite strong global sanctions against the North.
 
Quoting Russian customs data, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun daily reported on Monday that Russia exported 43-hundred tons of oil products such as gasoline and diesel oil to North Korea in the first six months of the year.
 
The shipments are said to be worth two-point-four million U.S. dollars, which is a two-fold increase from a year earlier.
 
A Russian professor told the paper that annual Russian shipments of gasoline and diesel oil to Pyongyang are estimated at around 200-thousand and 300-thousand tons, respectively, but the actual export volume would be much larger considering the shipments flowing into the North via China.
 
The U.S. blacklisted the Moscow-based Independent Petroleum Company(NNK) in June for exporting oil products to North Korea worth over one million U.S. dollars.

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