(Washington) US President Joe Biden assured Wednesday that “nothing was ruled out” about a ban on Russian oil imports, but the White House at the same time warned of the risks linked to a such decision.
Posted at 12:57 p.m.
“Nothing is excluded,” he replied to a journalist who questioned him about it, when he left the White House for a short trip.
Joe Biden made the statement after already taking a flurry of economic measures against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, ranging from a ban on US airspace to heavy sanctions on Russia’s central bank.
“We have no strategic interest in reducing the international supply of energy”, however said Wednesday the deputy spokeswoman of the White House Karine Jean-Pierre.
She stressed that Washington did not want to “fill Putin’s pockets” or penalize US consumers by driving up the price of black gold even further, which could happen after the announcement of an import ban.
American conservatives are calling for a measure against hydrocarbons, the most essential resource of the Russian economy, and are calling for boosting American production.
But several elected Democrats, the president’s party, also want to ban purchases of Russian black gold.
It would certainly be a symbolically strong sanction, but a priori without insurmountable consequences for the United States, themselves large oil producers and which do not rely much on Russia in this area.
A bit like Canada, which already decided on Monday to ban purchases of Russian crude oil.
Europe, for its part, depends heavily on Russian gas in particular, and this is the reason why the hydrocarbons sector has so far remained relatively spared from Western sanctions.
Some 8% of US imports of crude oil and refined products come from Russia, including 3% for crude oil alone, said Andy Lipow, oil market expert at Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, citing figures from the International Agency energy in 2021.
“We import about 473,000 barrels per day of Russian refined products,” he told AFP. Added to this are some 199,000 barrels of crude per day also imported from Russia.
By comparison, total imports of petroleum products by the United States, from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Russia, amount to 8.47 million barrels per day.
Democratic Senator Ed Markey has already introduced a bill “to ban the import of Russian petroleum products into the United States”.
“We can’t stop Putin with Russian gasoline in our cars,” said the Massachusetts senator, presenting his project on Tuesday. “US oil companies helped fuel Putin’s despicable war on Ukraine.”
Even without a barrage of Russian hydrocarbon sanctions just yet, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already pushed oil prices to their highest in more than a decade, while the gas reached new records.