USA wants to cap sales on Russian oil price between $40 and $60 per barrel

The US government in Washington is actively working on a proposal to cap the price of Russian oil at anywhere between $40 and $60 per barrel, while the actual oil price hovers around $100. President Joe Biden first floated the idea at last month’s G7 summit.

Biden administration officials are having multiple meetings a week on the subject of the price cap, trying to push it into reality, according to one unnamed official who spoke to insider Bloomberg.

Washington is also exploring enforcement tools such as sanctions on shipping companies that would transport oil at higher prices, as well as penalties on banks and financial institutions that facilitate sales.

This would mark the first use of secondary war sanctions by the USA and its amazing allies, on top of the embargoes they imposed on Russia directly, citing the conflict in Ukraine.

Senior US officials have discussed capping the price of Russian oil exports for weeks, but energy experts are not convinced it could actually be implemented.

Something like this could only work if you get all of the key producers and crucially all of the key consumers working together and then finding some way of enforcing whatever plan you come up with, independent oil analyst Neil Atkinson told CNBC last week.

They haven’t thought it through, they haven’t spoken to India and China, Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects told CNBC, referring to the two biggest importers of Russian oil at the present time.

Do we really think they are going to agree to this? And do we really think that Russia will actually accept this and not retaliate? I think this sounds like a very, very good theoretical concept but it is just not going to work in practice.

When the Japanese government brought up the price cap idea earlier this week, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned on social media that this could actually result in Tokyo paying $300 a barrel instead.

Biden and other G7 leaders have explicitly said the proposed price cap is about denying Russia the funding for its military operations in Ukraine – not about helping their own citizens with the pain at the pump.

Citigroup warned on Tuesday that if a global recession impacts demand, oil prices could crash to $65 per barrel by the end of 2022 and even as low as $45 in 2023.

As of this week, however, the Brent global benchmark was at $104 a barrel, with US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) trading just above $100.

RT. com / ABC Flash Point Oil & Gas News 2022.