Italy is importing almost four times as much oil from Russia than it did before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The country’s oil imported from Russia now stands at 450,000 barrels per day, according to the Financial Times, and is put down to the distorting impact of sanctions against Russia, the report adds.

The developments are centred around the ISAB oil refinery in Sicily, owned by Moscow-based Lukoil.

As a result of sanctions imposed on Russia, ISAB cannot obtain lines of credit from other producers of crude oil. As such, the refinery is solely relying on supplies from Lukoil, according to news reports.

“It’s paradoxical because the European Union wanted to penalise Russian energy imports but here they have actually been incentivised by the sanctions,” said Alessandro Tripoli, general-secretary for southern Sicily with the Federation for Energy, Fashion, Chemistry, and related workers, part of the CISL trade union. “Only 30% of ISAB’s crude was Russian before the sanctions, now it’s 100% because Italian banks blocked the refinery’s credit lines so Lukoil has become its only supplier.”

ISAB is one of the largest employers in the local area, and unions and politicians have cautioned that should a Russian oil embargo come into effect, the refinery would be immediately shut down, damaging the local economy.

“Should an EU embargo enter into force, they will have no crude oil to refine any more and will be forced to close down,” said Simone Tagliapietra, senior fellow at Bruegel think-tank. “In this case, given the effects on energy security and jobs, governments might need to temporarily nationalise these assets.”

Italy’s increase in Russian oil imports means the country is on the brink of exceeding Holland as the European Union’s largest importer of Russian crude oil, according to commodity data firm Kpler.

Earlier in May, the EU pledged to end imports of crude oil from Russia to the majority of member states, such as Italy, by the end of 2022.