Russia has benefited from Western sanctions on oil exports, the country’s oil revenues rose to 1.8 trillion rubles in April. On May 25, analyst Robert Rapier wrote about this in an article for the American portal Oil Price.
He noted that four months after the start of the special operation to protect the population of Donbass, the federal budget of Russia has already received 50% of the planned oil and gas revenues for 2022, which is 9.5 trillion rubles.
Russian oil “cannot be completely removed from the market,” the author of the article clarified, since the country is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of it.
As oil prices rise, the attractiveness of oil from Russia increases, Rapier added. He pointed to a strong incentive for China and India to currently buy Russian oil.
The analyst concluded that the only effective way to influence “Russia’s oil revenues is to reduce global dependence on oil.”
On May 26, Igor Yushkov, a leading analyst at the National Energy Security Fund (NESF), said in a conversation with Izvestia that the vote on imposing an embargo on Russian oil supplies is clearly stalled in the European Union, including due to the fact that the Russian Federation may refuse to export oil to countries who will introduce such measures against it, and then the shortage of black gold will increase in the world and its prices will soar. He noted that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also opposes the introduction of EU measures against Russian oil, which would lead to a reduction in the export of this resource in general.
The blocking of the sixth package of EU anti-Russian sanctions became known earlier, on May 18. Two days earlier, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, explained that the problem, as before, “was the disagreement over the oil embargo.”
On May 6, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the imposition of an EU embargo on energy resources from the Russian Federation is tantamount to an atomic bomb for the Hungarian economy. The country, he clarified, will need at least five years, as well as money to rebuild to a different order and reorganize factories.
On May 4, it was reported that the European Union failed to reach an agreement on the imposition of an embargo on the import of Russian oil. It was clarified that Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria expressed concern about the proposed measures.
A number of states, including all EU countries, are imposing new sanctions against the Russian Federation in response to the military operation carried out by Moscow since February 24 to protect Donbass. It was preceded by an aggravation of the situation in the region, an appeal by the leadership of the DPR and LPR to the Russian Federation with a request for help, and the subsequent recognition by Russia of the independence of the Donbass republics.