Iran Press/ America: “Europe clearly needs to reduce its dependence on Russia with respect to energy, but we need to be careful when we think about a complete European ban on, say, oil imports,” Janet Yellen said.
Yellen praised European efforts to wean off Russian energy imports but cautioned against the destructive effects of doing so too quickly. Her comments come as European leaders continue to debate boycotting Russian oil and gas products.
Last month, the US announced a total boycott of Russian petroleum products, amounting to about 672,000 barrels of oil a day, or 8% of US oil imports, according to US Energy Information Agency data. The EU also announced it would jointly buy and store gas, hydrogen, and liquified natural gas to help it reduce dependence on imports from Russia. However, an EU boycott has produced considerable discord in the bloc, as Russia supplies the 27 member states with 45% of their gas imports and 25% of their oil imports.
International petroleum prices remained high on Thursday, with Brent Crude trading at $107.8 per barrel, and the national average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US was $4.12, despite Biden releasing a large portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
On Tuesday, Leonhard Birnbaum, the CEO of German energy company E.ON, blasted plans to follow suit in Europe.
Berlin has said it will consider cutting Russian oil under specific conditions, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying on Wednesday that "oil imports will be halved by the summer and will be at zero by the end of the year."According to Politico, any EU boycott will differentiate between different grades of Russian oil and have to take into account Europe’s long-standing orientation towards Russian oil. For example, most European oil refineries are tooled to process Urals Crude, a heavy oil with a high sulfur content pumped in Russia’s Urals Mountains and Volga River valley regions. Russia also exports other varieties, including heavy fuel oil and vacuum gas oil, which supplies 10% of European diesel fuel - a touchy subject heading into the summer travel months.
The ban could produce more problems for European refineries than for Moscow, as substitutes for Urals Crude are few and far between, according to oil and gas analytics firm Vortexa.
Bloomberg noted in late March that Urals Crude exports to Europe had already declined by about 25% from the previous year, with more Russian exports going to Asia instead. That comes two months after Russian state-owned gas firm Rosneft signed a 10-year agreement with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) to ship 100 million metric tons, or 200,821 barrels per day of oil to refineries in northwestern China.
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