[TWO “discoveries” just after this interview:
First, Bloomberg reported Ukraine had destroyed an oil pumping station on the pipeline feeding Russia’s big Ust Luga oil export terminal on the Baltic Sea. This is the first time Kyiv has shutdown a Russian oil port, … which is exactly what I advocated in the interview above and since early-2024 as a military tactic to accompany imposition of “real” USA-EU oil sanctions on the three Russian west-facing oil ports, replacing the failed “oil price cap” policy.
Second, Christof Ruhl, former-BP VP, and -World Bank Moscow rep., now at the Columbia U. Energy Center, had an OP-ED in the FT, with a similar argument that Russian oil can be replaced with OPEC crude. I recommend it: “Trump should call on Opec in his bid to negotiate with Putin Ukraine’s western allies must join forces with the oil cartel to really squeeze Russia’s war economy” Christof Ruhl, 30jan25.]
There are two topics in this interview with Diana Skya of Poland’s national broadcaster, TVP:
- Putin’s oil export income can be slashed via new sanctions and military policies, in line with Trump’s interest in forcing a “deal”
- EU member states that seek a new Putin gas partnership are dysfunctionally replaying Merkel-ism and avoiding the real solution of reforming the Green Deal to put nuclear energy in the center. (See: “EU debates return to Russian gas as part of Ukraine peace deal. Advocates say reopening pipelines could help settlement with Moscow and cut energy costs” Henry Foy and Alice Hancock in Brussels and Christopher Miller in Kyiv, FT, 30jan25)
- OIL SANCTIONS:
I have argued for three years that the rationale behind the USA-EU imposition of a Russian “oil-price cap” rather than simply imposing real oil sanctions has been flawed, and the policy has failed.
It was conceived in early-2022, apparently by former-central-banker Mario Draghi of Italy and taken up by then-USA-Treasury-head Janet Yellen, neither of whom understood global oil trade sufficiently to see how easily the Russians could get around this scheme, as they have with a “shadow fleet” of oil tankers insured by Chinese, Russian or other non-EU, non-UK firms.
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