Members of the G7 have agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil in a bid to hit Moscow’s ability to finance the war in Ukraine.
Finance ministers said the cap on crude oil and petroleum products would also help reduce global energy prices. The cap will be set at a level based on a range of technical inputs.
“We will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” the G7 said.
Russia said it would stop selling oil to countries that imposed price caps.
Well, so the price cap is effectively a “we won’t buy it because you won’t sell it” policy.
There’s long been a delusion that commodities like oil are global. They operated almost as if they were for a while, but oil is produces in certain places, refined in certain places and shipped in specific pipelines, ships, trucks and trains. It has different qualities and not all refineries can handle all types of crude.
To the extent, however, that oil or natural gas or coal or whatever is subject to boycotts, it becomes less of a global market and that won’t generally decrease prices, rather the reverse, at least in the early phases of a breakdown of a global market. (In the late phase prices will diverge significantly in different countries, with extensive measures or realities in place to prevent arbitrage.)
So (2)…
UK Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi said the G7 were “united against this barbaric aggression”, adding the price cap would “curtail Putin’s capacity to fund his war”.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a cap would also help fight inflation, which is on the rise in many of the world’s economies.
The price cap helps achieve “our dual goals of putting downward pressure on global energy prices while denying Putin revenue to fund his brutal war in Ukraine”, she said.
Sanctions have not reduced Russia’s income, they have increased it. This won’t be an exception because most of the world isn’t onside with sanctions, including India, China, virtually all of Africa and most of South America, but by fragmenting the market it will increase prices, especially in specific areas like Europe which need to get their hydrocarbons (remember, this is not a virtual good, it has to be extracted, refined and shipped), through specific infrastructure links.
The “price cap” is thus largely a symbolic measure, which will if anything increase prices somewhat. That’s not to say it’s useless, if the plan is a new long Cold War with Russia (and almost certainly China), getting off supplies from those two countries needs to be done and done in stages.
But it sure isn’t going to decrease prices or empty Putin’s treasury. In fact, in the short to middle term it’s likely to hurt Europe, again, far more than Russia.