No one has seen yet cases of a price cap on Russian crude oil, and Russia hasn't yet seen the impact of the price cap mechanism, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
The Kremlin is skeptical about attempts to calculate Russia's losses from the price cap, Peskov said, as carried by Russian news agency TASS.
It's too early to draw conclusions about the impact of the price cap, and "there is no evidence to support such conclusions," Putin's spokesman noted, asked to comment on a Wednesday report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The report says that the EU oil ban and the G7-EU price cap are costing Russia $172 million (160 million euros) per day, due to the fall in shipment volumes and prices for Russian oil.
Urals, Russia's flagship crude grade, was going for $37.80 a barrel at the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk on Friday, half the Brent Crude price on the same day, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing data provided by Argus Media.
Russian oil revenues are expected to drop further in February due to the EU's ban on refined oil imports, the extension of the price cap to refined oil, and reductions in pipeline oil imports to Poland, CREA said.
"So far, no one has really come across an oil price cap…so we are skeptical about such [forecast figures]," Peskov said in response to the data released by CREA.
The EU and G7 banned on December 5 maritime transportation services from shipping Russia's crude oil to third countries if the oil is bought above the price cap of $60 per barrel, and the EU imposed an embargo on seaborne imports of Russian oil into the bloc.
Moscow claims the price cap will not seriously hit its oil production and economy. Russia's oil production will not fall off a cliff now that the EU-G7 price cap on Russian crude has come into effect, Russia's First Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin said last month.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Comments
Reports by Western media that the cap is costing Russia $172 million a day (equivalent to 2.15 million barrels a day) and that Russian oil production is headed for a fall are deliberate disinformation.
Both claims were denied by Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Prskov and Russian first Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak saying that no one has seen yet cases of a price cap on Russian crude oil and that Russia’s oil production will not fall off a cliff now as a result of the cap.
Western countries are resorting to disinformation because they are afraid to tell their people that both sanctions and the cap have failed miserably at a time when China, India and Asian oil traders are competing for Russian oil and buying huge volumes of it.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Global Energy Expert