Brazilian crude oil to the UK crosses half-million-ton mark for the first time

The crude oil corridor between Brazil and the United Kingdom, for years a footnote in MDIC ComexStat tables, turned into a headline in the 2025 closed year. Brazilian exports of crude to British refineries reached 552,674 tons — against a multi-year historical average of 31,341 tons. That is up roughly 2,000× more.

A route that looked confined to one-off cargoes acquired industrial density in a short span of months. To frame it: the average prior-year volume fit in a single Suezmax with spare slot capacity. The 2025 number takes a full fleet, distributed across monthly liftings that rewrote the loading calendar at Santos and Açu.

Possible drivers

A few hypotheses help frame the move, each carrying the usual hedge. The first is supply. Brazilian pre-salt output grew steadily through 2024 and 2025, with Búzios and Mero wells operating close to nameplate capacity per ANP public data. When domestic supply expands without a matching refining footprint at home — a bottleneck that has shaped the Brazilian energy story for over a decade — surplus crude has to go somewhere. Brazil typically routes that surplus to Asian buyers, but the equation is not fixed.

The second is demand. North Sea refineries have been running heavier and more sour diets after slate changes at several UK units, and pre-salt grades — medium to light, low sulfur — fit that envelope cleanly. The gradual decline of mature North Sea fields, typically associated with the need for substitute barrels, opens a competitive window for equatorial origins.

The third is geopolitics. Europe's post-Russia energy reshuffle rewrote supply chains without fully resolving them, and the repositioning of trading houses that once handled Russian barrels for UK destinations may have pulled Brazilian crude in as a partial Atlantic-basin substitute. The pattern mirrors what played out in the Mediterranean during 2023, where pre-salt grades surfaced in slates that previously leaned on Urals.

The macro frame

The United Kingdom has never sat in the top-5 destinations for Brazilian crude — China, the United States and India have held the podium for years. The arrival of London as an anchor-country buyer changes the bilateral arithmetic. In absolute terms, 552,000 tons represent a few days of pre-salt output — modest for Petrobras, material for the bilateral balance.

Brent traded in a band around $70 per barrel through the year, which puts FOB value of these cargoes in the range that matters, even if the primary data source here is MDIC ComexStat and not individual contract terms. Crude oil is among the highest-turnover items on European import slates — what shows up in 2025 may not be there in 2026. The corridor depends on a stack of variables that none of the players control unilaterally: pre-salt output cadence, North Sea decline rates, EU-Russia signaling, refinery turnaround calendars on both sides of the Atlantic.

Signal for 2026

To follow the corridor as MDIC publishes the first 2026 months, check the pair granularly on Kyrodata. The behavior of the early-year shipments will signal whether 2025 was the head of a trend or an isolated window of opportunity.

London does not buy Brazilian crude for sentimental reasons. It buys when the arithmetic works.