Essay by Eric Worrall
Biden thinks he can reduce the money flowing to Russia’s military by organising a global oil purchasing cartel.
US, Allies Discuss Capping Russian Oil at $40-$60 a Barrel to Cut War Financing
US also weighing enforcement tools, including sanctions
Secondary sanctions seen as a measure of last resort
By Alberto Nardelli, Jennifer Jacobs, and Annmarie Hordern
7 July 2022, 01:25 GMT+10The US and its allies have discussed trying to cap the price on Russian oil between $40 and about $60 a barrel, according to people familiar with the matter.
Allies have been exploring several ways to limit Russia’s oil revenues while minimizing the impact on their own economies in discussions that began in the run-up to the Group of Seven summit.
At the summit in Germany on June 28 leaders agreed to explore options to cap prices by banning insurance and transportation services needed to ship Russian crude and petroleum products unless the oil is purchased below an agreed price.
A more specific threshold would depend on market conditions when a cap is agreed and those could change significantly. Before Monday’s mini-rout in headline oil prices, Russian crude was probably trading around the $80-a-barrel mark. Information about transactions in the nation’s barrels has become less visible since the invasion.
…
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-06/us-and-allies-discuss-capping-russian-oil-prices-at-40-60
This cartel has no chance of working, like a lot of Biden’s economic ideas. India makes no secret they are buying all the oil Russia can ship, and are probably even shipping some of their imported Russian oil to Europe. Hunter Biden’s Chinese oil company may be doing likewise.
A purchasing cartel can only work if buyers can live without the commodity being targeted, long enough for the seller to be forced to lower prices. Given that Russian energy exports have continued without significant interruption since the start of the Ukraine conflict, I’m guessing Russia will laugh off such threats.
The only way the USA could unilaterally choke off the supply of Western money to Russia is to crash the global price of oil, by abandoning US domestic green policies, and encouraging US producers to flood the global market with a deluge of cheap US oil. But this doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon – Biden can’t even muster the political courage to face down greens in his own administration, to lower gasoline prices for Americans.
Somebody must be smoking wacky weed.
The idea is so unbelievably ridiculous that only someone with absolutely zero knowledge and experience of the real world could possibly come up with it.
The incomparably incompetent Yellen’s fingerprints are all over this.
Close. This is the smartest man Joe knows negotiating price.
https://twitter.com/njgloyper/status/1546229042415812609
More like the Big Guy’s fingerprints!
10% to the big guy
This idea makes perfect sense if your a socialist.
The career politicians of the USA and UK (EU as well probably) have forgotten who elected them and why. They were elected to serve their nation and their people’s needs first and foremost; globalist virtue signalling on the world stage must come a distant second. It’s high time they were reminded of that simple fact.
I do get the impression that no one who knows economics had anything to do with this proposal. One can only speculate as to what the advocates actual education was in, but this almost makes the Green New Deal seem plausible.
I gave a ‘+’ to this “no one who knows economics had anything to do with this proposal”. And BTW I also gave a ‘+’ to John Garrett’s “Yellen’s fingerprints are all over this”.
So Yellen is running the autocue?
This is ‘what can happen’ when Joe Biden ‘goes off script’ (msn.com)
Do they mean like OPEC? The same OPEC that has sided with Putin against America? Something like that?
Why would you crash your own profit margin? make hay while the sun shines
OPEC wants to maintain high prices it’s what cartels do.
I wonder if Sri Lanka would be worried about quality certification on oil from Russia. Likewise India.
USA holds a highly privileged position as being the global banker; only country that creates the global currency. There is a limit to the tolerance of abusing the privilege. China and Russia would like to see USA lose that privilege and are willing to step up. A major advance for Russia is insisting Russian gas is bought with Russian RUBs
Think about it. If USA puts a limit of say USD60 per barrel for oil, that simply means the RUB will strengthen against the USD. Putin knows what his barrel of oil is worth in RUBs. He has no care for what it is worth in USDs.
Energy is the true currency of the industrial world and Russia has that in abundance. The price of their oil will be whatever the highest bidder is prepared to pay.
This story identifies the push to Petro-Yuan:
https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/91763/petroyuan-institutional-investors-may-have-to-deal-with-a-new-world-order-of-currencies
These countries are now the big players in the global energy market.
Energy is the currency and China realises that. Without energy backing a currency, it is worthless. Also worthless when sanctions apply at the whim of a senile puppet.
Most US citizens do not understand the privilege they have as the world banker. They do not see that abusing this privilege is causing other countries to find different basis for international trade.
The USA owes the rest of the world a whole year of its output and the indebtedness is presently rising at 7% of US GDP over any time period. USDs are losing their gloss globally.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account
The main holdup to de-dollarisation of international trade is trust in the Chinese and Russian banking systems is lower than trust in the US banking system.
I’ll never forget a story I heard in banking circles, about Russia inviting global bankers to Moscow, to invite them to relocate their headquarters. After the big seminar, each banker received a visit from a high ranking Kremlin official, who assured them that if they had any problems with the mafia call him and he’d sort them out.
That after hours visit killed the deal – bankers want rule of law, not dependency on a friend in the Kremlin.
Eric. that is from your perspective. You are implying that friends in Washington are more reliable. However, let’s say UK’s new PM dumps the Net Zero target in light of the nonsense it is and decides Brits should not have to choose between staying warm and being fed. Then Biden applies sanctions on the UK and cuts the UK off from global financing. That was the threat facing Morison before he found the religion.
China is concerned about hoarding worthless paper. Biden has demonstrated he can make US paper held by Russians worthless. Why not China as well. A banker needs to be above politics – US is abusing its banker’s privilege.
Every banking system runs on trust. Can you trust Biden – head of the US bank? Russia certainly can’t.
EU sends Ukraine peanuts while returning truckloads of Rubles to Russia.
I’ve talked to people who ran businesses in Russia, after about a month you get a visit from an accountant flanked by two gorillas who explains Russia is a dangerous place to do business, and lets you know how much you have to pay every month to ensure the personal safety of your executives.
Obviously there are plenty of opportunities in the West to pay politicians and purchase favours, and I also heard from someone who tried to open a nightclub in London, that he got a visit from an accountant and his minders. But the situation is far worse in Russia than the West.
Imagine how quickly someone like Trump would be arrested if he was a Russian businessman. US politicians might be trying to make life difficult for Trump, but he is still free to conduct business, and the people persecuting him are constrained, they have to operate within the law. In Russia Trump would have been arrested and locked up, or would have had to flee into exile, and be checking his Chinese tea with a geiger counter, like all the other oligarchs who annoyed Putin.
Yes, a friend in my industry selling electrical equipment told me story of having a gun in his face during price negotiations.
No thanks
and within the law leaves a LOT of loopholes for the same just less obvious.
ie planning charges approvals and mega bucks of consulting fees. hillnbill had a great scam asking for Donations…to their trust and then magically approvals got granted uranium 1 as an eg.
gates seems to do similarly
soros sure does, and then uses tame pet NGOs to seed discontent and revolutions Maidan anyone?
dont see much difference really
just windowdressing
chinas been divesting usd$ reserves and elsewhere funds since the bunfight started, why the hell would you leave cash in OS accounts for trade if they can be arbitrarily stolen??
see people are also repatriating gold stores too
uSA has shown itself to be UNtrustworthy and over reaching
the theft of private citizens ships paid for and not breaking any laws, if Russia has a problem with the offshore autocrats it for them to take steps and they havent.
pity you guys dont look to your OWN rich crooks paying no taxes and milking the poor
The main holdup to de-dollarisation of international trade is trust in the Chinese and Russian banking systems is lower than trust in the US banking system.
QED-
Protest in China over frozen bank accounts ends in violence (msn.com)
If you want your dough you catch COVID 🙁
the forced trade in US$ has given many people the irrits for decades
i for one wont mind it falling over
If I want to buy from canada or india having to ex to usd and then over while paying us banksters/paypal etc percentages makes me do so rarely
global trade would pick up if it was removed as the one n only.
Surely it is more important to identify the key players who are enforcing the net zero concept and presumably using illegal threats in some cases to gain compliance. If the net zero concept is removed from the equations, the US could return to normal fossil fuel exploration, extraction, processing and marketing irrespective of what other countries are doing, like Russian attempts to regain territory.
The net zero concept is so imaginary, yet so harmful, that one cannot imagine serious people accepting it and helping to enforce it unless they were either pressured to comply or are making a lot of unearned money from the concept. Those are not reasons to harm the US economy and to deprive citizens of essential services like cheap and reliable electricity.
So, who is really key to the net zero push and why do they persist with the fabrication, money or fear?
Geoff S
My circle of acquaintances isn’t huge but it contains more than a few who just want to kill oil companies and pipelines. They welcome anything that can further that goal but taking away all of the CO2 nonsense would not change their feelings or their efforts in the least. They would just make up or endorse other excuses.
And substitute WHAT?! The ignorance of people in terms of “how stuff is made/where it comes from is astounding.
WEF worldbank Davos brussels etc all such a chummy bunch with shared agendas
There are two things the administration can do to reduce the price of oil & gas to everyone: it can end its war on fossil fuels at home; it can end its proxy war (which it is losing) and end the sanctions.
Both actions were taken to deliberately increase the price of oil & gas. The price cap is an dishonest effort to create the impression, ahead of the midterm elections, that they do not want high fuel prices.
Russia is now getting paid for its oil in Rubles. Germany is on the edge of emergency energy rationing. Canada is sidestepping their own sanctions on Russia to help Germany out. With their dreams of turning off Russian oil production swirling the drain, the west has come up with a new idea, let’s just limit how much people are allowed to pay for the Russian oil we previously said they couldn’t buy at all.
Yeah, that’ll work.
Similarly, raising carbon taxes to force people to go electric will fail. If an attempted 10% reduction in production causes this much of a mess, can one imagine the mess that would be created by a carbon tax high enough to cut consumption by 50% or more? If renewables actually worked we wouldn’t have this mess. Governments are running around the world desperately trying to establish sources of supply specifically because they know very well that renewables cannot step in.
In a sense, there is already a ‘natural’ carbon tax that has doubled the price of gasoline and natural gas has gone way up (in different proportion according to where you live) – so why are we still paying a artificial carbon tax to the federal government here in Canada and why isn’t there just a huge blossoming of wind and solar??? Oh, wind and solar are hugely more expensive now because they to depend heavily on fossil fuels – got it.
Rube Goldberg energy policy as designed by drug-addled liberal arts dropouts.
That’s an insult to drug-addled liberal arts dropouts.
one of our aussie powercos will ONLY do a deal for cheap power IF you OWN an electric car yup REDenergy
found out last night using the vic govt compare energy webpages!!!!!
So by a cr@py little golf cart and let it identify as a Tesla.
Russia now has examples off all the new missiles they need to copy and create the countermeasures they need
well yes because the ukies SOLD them off. rather amusing they flogged or allowed the french ones to get nabbed the other day
taken sounds better than sold I guess
Of course they did. It’s what they do – in the face of Russian aggression and stating that they ‘had their backs to the wall’ they imported advanced electronics from the west, installed them in good tanks then sold the whole lot off to Pakistan. The Ukrainian oligarchs, the ones with offshore accounts and multimillion dollar Florida mansions, don’t give a shit about Ukraine or it’s people they’re only interested in money. It’s interesting to note that all of the body armour supplied to Ukraine for free has to be bought by the soldiers on the black market if they want to use it. It’s absolutely disgusting what they have done to their own country for a profit.
More likely it will, if successfully agreed upon, be turned against the West’s petroleum industry. These are the folks the left really hates. I recall not too long-ago Biden telling the petrol stations to lower their prices in spite of his inflationary economy.
I’m sure part of the reason Russia kicked off is they were being drawn into the role of supply supplicant. Its a shame Russia displayed their dissatisfaction with these geopolitical games by invading another country.
On that note, I believe Putin seeks to fulfill his self-anointed expansionist role as guardian of the lost Soviet empire. Georgia, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Crimea, Ukraine, and Kasakstan are five nations Putin has used his military to bring them back under the umbrella of Russia. I would say that Putin is a very good opportunist when it comes to *Make Russia Great Again. [apologies, Mr. Trump]
Or could Putin be doing exactly what he said would do after NATO expansion and Brandon’s incompetence 🤔
The reason NATO is expanding is precisely because Putin has been using his military to force former Soviet block countries back under the Russian umbrella. You have cause and effect reversed.
Why is a democratic Russia fearful of NATO?
russia was well aware of the 90s and onwards USA plans to try and get into russias states and DEcolonise them
ah yes
interferes and get financial and power grabs in plain english
I suppose one question would be, what has a ‘democratic’ Russia, have to fear from neighboring ‘independent’ democratic States, acting independently of Russia?
Perhaps the words, democratic, and independent, lose something in translation from English dictionary to the everyday lexicon of left-wing authoritarians?
It would be nice if oz shut up for once.
NATO treatys broken Minsk broken and 14k donbass citizens killed since 2014 then usa interferes with nord2, wanting to flogs usa lpg at high prices by boat to EU ( outright idiocy and Trump did that)
cant say i think Russias in the wrong
yet another ussa led mess
Russia IS in the wrong, but they certainly aren’t alone – there have been a lot of countries either actively compliant in this mess or willing to look the other way.
Withdrawn
You’re not worth cussing out
Can these people really be this stupid?
Ever work in government, Bob?
Biden is clown with dementia.
Biden is a sock puppet with dementia-
Internet catches White House erasing Joe Biden’s gaffe from records (msn.com)
What’s the excuse for those running the autocue?
Is this one of Hunter’s schemes? It’s about that stupid.
Leftists are so stupid….
All Joe needs to do are:
1) Finish Keystone Pipeline.
2) Intimate record oil lease auctions for offshore and Federal lands.
3) Allow ANWAR oil projects.
4) Make it illegal for banks/financial institutions to use ESG loan risk assessment.
5) Force EPA to approve all drilling and construction permits with 3 months of receipt…
6) Lower corporate taxes to 15%.
7) Cut all Federal government spending 7% across the board.
8) Pass Balanced Budget Amendment.
9) Unwind Federal Reserves’ books excessive asset holdings and stop rolling over 2-year Treasuries until the assets equal 2019 levels.
10) Continue raising interest rates until inflation is below 2%.
11) EPA approves 4 new large-scale oil refineries to be immediately be built.
12) Set goal to increase US oil and gas production to be 20% above 2019 levels.
There, The US oil crisis and economic collapse are averted.
That means replacing Biden by a real conservative – RINOs and squishy Republicans need not apply. They are an endangered species – Biden would never agree to that prosperity-list, even if you cut off his meds, refused diaper changes and plugged up his nose so he couldn’t smell anyone’s hair anymore.
PCmann-san:
You’re correct. Joe’s far-Left handlers will never allow any of these solutions, and the current herd of RINOs in the GOP would not allow most of these logical solutions to be implemented.
Leftists will be utterly gutted in the 2022 midterms, and the GOP will likely gain 40+ House and 5+ Senate seats.
A nice start, but the GOP must create another Contract with America 2.0 before 2024 elections if any significant changes are to be achieved when the GOP retakes control of all 3 government branches, but alas…
But SAMURAI you have to remember that in all these 3 letter agencies sit democrat employees who believe government is the answer. You want a fundamental change but it’s not in DC’s interest.
Drain the swamp.
Sergio-san:
The recent 6-3 West Virginia v. EPA SCOTUS decision will make it much more difficult for Leftist bureaucrats to implement costly rules, regulations and mandates ageist the private without specific approval from the Legislative branch.
may i add to your list.
13.ban government worker unions.
14.cut all government agencies budgets 50% immediately.
15.in crease military budget 25%.
Joe-san:
I certainly agree that JFK’s Executive Order allowing public sector unionization is terribly corrupt, and needs to be rescinded.
Cutting all agencies’ budgets by 50% is too much, however, Inthink the Department of Education should be cut 100% and shutdown entirely.
I also think Defense spending should be limited to 3% of GDP, or about $700 billion/year.
Cheers!
“The only way the USA could unilaterally choke off the supply of Western money to Russia is to crash the global price of oil, by abandoning US domestic green policies, and encouraging US producers to flood the global market with a deluge of cheap US oil.”
I don’t see how the US industry could be induced to cooperate on this, unless Biden buys it off the oil industry at $100 and then sells it at $50 on the global market. I think the WTO would get complaints about the subsidy. OPEC wouldnt go along with crashing the market either.
Finally, it’s not easy for the US Oil industry to chop prices as it is. As I understand it, they responded to the craziness of Net Zero where oil was to be curtailed by using the windfall prices to produce from higher cost reservoirs. Moreover, this madness resulted in a serious drop in enrollment of petroleum engineers and geologists.
When you “believe in six impossible things before breakfast” and think magical thoughts about future technology coming along to rescue unworkable energy systems you are guaranteed to end in the mess you are in now.
Abandoning the renewables, and the whole climate shiteree of course should be done immediately! It won’t prevent a horrific depression which is building up steam at present and I’m praying that the global neomarxist policies, even if abandoned now, don’t inflict much greater carnage in the coming couple of years than the 20th Century’s Madmen’s policy prescriptions.
A 5 year tax holiday for production and sale of domestically sourced crude oil + a massive relaxation of environmental regulations and the permitting process would probably do it.
This is the biggest reason why the so called Russian collusion never made any sense.
The last thing the Russians would ever want is a US president who promises to increase American oil production.
When the people supposedly in charge of world affairs are this disconnected from reality, it makes you realise how much trouble the world is actually in.
If politicians in the West are unaware of economic fundamentals, to this degree, it is little wonder they think Net Zero is a good idea. They have not got a clue what they are doing or what they are creating.
yes and Aussie morons of the church of green justgave us our very own lunatic for the next 3 yrs
With green policies and the hostile Biden, Trudeau, etc., in place there is no incentive to increase production – better for the oil companies to sit back and enjoy the healthy profits and channel that to the investors to make up for the past lean years where oil was sometimes just $20-something a barrel.
Biden Seeks a Global Agreement to guarantee shortages. He is our enemy.
Sounds like the former Soviet Union. Everything is cheap, but the stores are empty.
Russia does have the option to just cut supplies to unfriendly countries. A recent article by J.P.Morgan Chase estimated that Russia could withstand a reduction in exports of 5 million barrels per day, but that would increase the price of the remaining available oil to $390. If Russia reduced by only 3 mpd, then the expected price would be only $195 per barrel. Methinks that there may be some skullduggery behind the Yellen proposal.
Hunter may be the whole point.
If you can buy discounted Russian oil then resell it at world prices, that is a great moneymaker.
Instead of Oil for Food it can be Oil for Biden
That thought crossed my mind. But I haven’t got proof.
and imagine the looks on uae n other faces at that?
meanwhile theyre loving the outrageous price hikes making it hand over fist making up for covid time losses so theyll not agree
and
Russias already taking steps to do their OWN insurance for shipping
Bidets an utter idiot and so is anyone thinking this would work
Can a puppet or ventriloquist’s dummy organize anything?
It is not a matter of Biden organizing anything – which he is mentally incapable of doing –
but of who the unelected puppeteer is pulling his strings.
Biden thinks?
Just when I think they can’t get any dumber they do something like this.
Prez Dullard doesn’t develop or “think of” any policies—being the “Weekend at Bernie’s” front man for his despotic handlers and his despicable Party.
Biden does not think: he suffers from dementia.
Anything except letting AMERICAN companies drill. Democrats’ “America Last” policy in action. When will normal Americans rise up against these despotic, tyrannical destroyers?
Countries look after their own self interests, only in the US, for the leadership, the word self means one’s self.
I’d like to see a global cap on government spending.
Uncle Joe can play “crazy ant” politics with the best of them.
This is beautiful about Biden’s autocue/teleprompt and the horrors thereof. However even they are preferable to the alternative:
https://youtu.be/hCmbVHtJSnM
Also – not workable.
The Chinese government is buying Russian oil in closed agreements at a steep discount, without market competition. This won’t change while sanctions are in place.
The positive is that oil China has been buying on the market creates less market competition, allowing the oil prices to stabilize and not shoot to $150bbl.
So China gets the cheapest oil, Russia gets money to keep their economy from crashing, and the world keeps oil down at 110bbl and feels good about ‘sanctioning’ Russia. The great Kabuki.
If the world was serious, they’d sanction anyone who bought Russian oil and gas. Unfortunately, this would cause political and economic complications… and our leaders would rather have the appearance of virtuous righteousness than the actual painful purity of abstention.