Nord Stream gas pipeline completely at a standstill, Moscow claims leak – rts.ch

The G7 will “urgently” implement a cap on the price of Russian oil and encourages a broad coalition of countries to participate in this initiative intended to deprive Moscow of part of its windfall from the energy sector.

The decision was finalized during a virtual summit of finance ministers from the seven most industrialized countries (United States, Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan).

An oil terminal in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. [Anatoly Maltsev – Keystone]

“Russia is benefiting economically from the uncertainties linked to the war on the energy markets,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner told reporters after the meeting.

Complex mechanism

“The price cap will be set at a level based on a series of technical data and will be decided by the entire coalition before its implementation”, write the G7 countries, ensuring that future prices would be “communicated publicly from clear and transparent way”.

Concretely, Russia would sell its oil at a lower price than the one at which it sells it today, but which would remain higher than the production price, so that it has an economic interest in continuing to sell it to them, and thus does not cut its deliveries.

The challenge is to rally as many countries as possible because the price cap will only work if all the major buyer countries participate, underline the experts, who point in particular to the role of China and India.

“Completely absurd”, according to Moscow

Russia for its part, even before its formalization, denounced a “completely absurd” measure.

Such “interference” in the oil market “will only destabilize the oil industry, the oil market. And for this, European and American consumers will be the first to pay”, threatened Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, cited by Russian news agencies.