The White House has asked the U.S. Departments of State and Treasury to draft a list of sanctions on some Russian entities and individuals, including oligarchs, which could be eased, Reuters reports, citing sources with knowledge of the plans.
The U.S. State and Treasury Departments are asked to draft a list of possible sanctions relief measures that U.S. officials could discuss with Russian representatives as part of the broader U.S.-Russia talks on unfreezing diplomatic and economic relations, according to Reuters’s sources.
The U.S. and Russia have also discussed a possible end to the war in Ukraine.
It was not immediately clear what the U.S. could request in return for some sanctions relief, Reuters reports, but any economic deal between the United States and Russia would require U.S. sanctions relief.
Currently, Russia appears to be struggling to deliver its oil cargoes to customers still doing deals with Moscow, following the latest U.S. sanctions on Russian oil trade, which were imposed in the final days of the Biden Administration.
The January 10 sanctions, the most aggressive sanctions on Russia’s oil trade yet, have upended global oil trade as Asia rushes to cover Russian barrels with alternative supply and tanker rates soar amid significantly decreased availability of non-sanctioned vessels.
Many of the vessels, specialized tankers, and shuttle tankers transporting Russia’s oil from the Arctic and Far East Pacific fields and production clusters to Asia have now been sanctioned.
Tankers continue to load crude oil from Russia but many of these are seeing difficulty in delivering the cargo to ports as buyers avoid supply chain sanctioned by the United States, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Of the 19 vessels loaded from the Sakhalin Island in Russia since the U.S. sanctions came into effect, only five have delivered their cargoes to a final port of destination, according to data reported by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee.
Similar cargoes from Sakhalin spent only about a week at sea previously. Now some tankers have been at sea for nearly two months, per tanker-tracking compiled by Bloomberg.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Related Stories
