Page 12 - FSUOGM Week 47 2022

FSUOGM POLICY FSUOGM

UK continues buying up Russian crude

despite phase-out

UK THE UK is continuing to purchase Russian oil Estonia, Poland and Belgium, the newspaper
despite its pledge to shun such shipments, using said.
The UK is continuing documents that name other countries as the sup- According to the Sunday Times, Russian oil
purchases, but pliers, the Sunday Times reported on November tankers can evade sanctions by offloading their
indirectly. 20. crude to other ships on the high seas, typically
At least 39 tankers laden with Russian crude disabling their GPS transponders so that they
worth GBP200mn ($237mn) have arrived since cannot be tracked during the operation. In one
February, even though they “were classified as such case recorded in May, the Mariner III tanker
imports from other countries,” the UK news- left Russia’s south port of Tuapse with a cargo of
paper reported. All told, Russian oil shipments 200,000 barrels of crude. Following five days
worth GBP778mn have been delivered to 10 UK on the ocean, the vessel anchored with a larger
ports since March, according to the newspaper. tanker belonging to Greek firm Marinoula. The
In June alone, the UK received GBP78mn of ships stopped moving near the town of Kala-
Russian crude in June, according to the Sunday mata, in Greek waters.
Times, although the UK’s National Statistics Over the following 36 hours, the pair of ves-
Service stated that the country did not import sels were linked together by large pipes. After
any oil from Russia. This is because the statistics receiving Mariner III’s oil, the Greek ship headed
service takes into account the exporting country, off to the UK shore, where it docked in Imming-
not the producer of the goods. Officially, that oil ham and unloaded around 250,000 barrels of oil
was listed as imported from the Netherlands, on June 6. ™

EU, allies continue to debate Russian

oil price cap

RUSSIA EU diplomats are continuing talks on the intro- questions about how effectively it will deprive
duction of a price cap on Russian oil exports, Moscow of revenues. Urals is at present selling
The mechanism needs although a final deal is yet to be hashed out. at $20-25 per barrel below international bench-
to be approved before Officials from all 27 EU member states marks, as a result of sanctions and some buyers
the EU introduces its discussed the matter late into the evening on shunning the supplies in response to Moscow’s
embargo on Russian oil November 23 without agreeing a ceiling price actions in Ukraine.
in early December. that traders, shippers and other companies There is still significant disagreement
would have to pay for Russian oil sold outside the between EU member states about what price
bloc. The policy needs to be adopted before the the cap should be set at. Poland, Lithuania and
EU’s embargo on most Russian crude imports Estonia believe that the $65-70 per barrel would
comes into force on December 5. leave Russia with too much revenue, since its
That embargo will only apply to Russian production costs are only around $20 per barrel.
oil supplies coming into the EU, but the US However, the argument has been made that it is
and Ukraine’s other allies want to further limit essential that Russia still has a sufficient incentive
Moscow’s financial gains by imposing a ceiling to maintain production, to avoid aggravating
price on Russian oil sold outside Europe. Rus- the global energy supply crunch. JP Morgan has
sia has said many times it will ignore the policy, warned that oil prices could hit a “stratospheric”
and analysts have warned it may be difficult to $380 per barrel if Russia retaliated to the price
enforce. cap by cutting production by 5mn barrels per
Brussels wants the cap to be set at some- day. A reduction of 3mn bpd could raise Brent
where between $65 and $70 per barrel, Reuters to $190 per barrel.
reported on November 23. The policy is also Cyprus, Greece and Malta, which have large
backed by the G7 and Australia. This price cap is shipping industries, on the other hand, think that
roughly in line with the price that Russia’s Urals the cap is too low, and they are also demanding
blend is currently trading at, however, raising compensation for the loss of business, or more

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 47 25•November•2022