Newly released official data confirms that Brazil shipped no crude oil directly to Israel in 2025, a milestone that pro-boycott activists are calling a tangible win for grassroots pressure aimed at holding the South American nation accountable to international obligations amid escalating tensions over Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Data published in the 2026 Statistical Yearbook from Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP), which was released publicly in late June, verifies that no direct crude oil shipments from Brazil to Israel were recorded last calendar year. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a leading group advocating for economic pressure on Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, has attributed the shift to coordinated campaigning targeting both the Brazilian federal government and the country’s leading energy corporations.
In a public social media statement, the movement welcomed the end of direct exports as a meaningful step toward reducing Brazil’s complicity in what the International Court of Justice has labeled a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza. The statement emphasized that sustained organizing from grassroots community groups and national trade unions has successfully pushed Brazilian leadership to align its trade practices with its public rhetorical commitments to international law.
Despite celebrating the breakthrough, BDS activists were quick to note that the zero-direct-export mark only closes one pathway for Brazilian oil to reach Israel. ‘The direct route is closed, but the back door isn’t,’ the group acknowledged, indicating that indirect shipments via third-party re-exports still allow Brazilian crude to enter Israeli markets. The movement added that it would continue its pressure campaign, framing the 2025 result as one incremental step toward a full embargo.
Recent trade data from clean energy advocacy organization Oil Change International contextualizes the shift: before 2025, Brazil had rapidly grown into one of Israel’s top crude suppliers. As recently as mid-2004, Brazil ranked as Israel’s fifth-largest crude provider, covering 9% of the country’s total crude import demand. Even amid a sharp diplomatic fallout in 2024, Brazil climbed to become Israel’s fourth-largest crude exporter that year, still holding a 9% share of Israeli imports, according to Oil Change International’s analysis.
The diplomatic rift between Brasília and Tel Aviv widened dramatically in February 2024, when Israeli officials designated Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva persona non grata after Lula publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and compared Israeli military operations to the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. Since that breakdown, bilateral relations have remained frozen: in July 2025, Brazil formally announced its diplomatic backing for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and recalled its ambassador to Israel in a sign of protest.
Brazil’s state-owned energy giant Petrobras, which dominates the country’s crude export sector, has long maintained that it does not directly sell crude to Israeli buyers. The company has repeatedly stated that it only sells crude to international refineries, and claims it has no oversight or control over the final destination of products refined from its crude.
The push for a full national embargo gained formal trade union backing in May 2025, when two of Brazil’s largest oil worker federations submitted an open letter to the federal government. The letter cited Lula’s own sharp public criticism of Israel and urged the administration to implement a formal embargo on all Brazilian oil exports to Israel, regardless of shipping route. To date, the federations have not received any official response from the government.
BDS has argued that even indirect shipments via third countries still place Brazil under international legal responsibility for enabling Israel’s military campaign. ‘Under international law, a state’s responsibility is determined by its knowledge and its material contribution to the supply, not by the route the shipment takes,’ the movement stated. The group has vowed to continue organizing until all Brazilian crude, whether shipped directly or indirectly, is barred from reaching Israeli markets.