Striking a conciliatory note on India’s imports of Russian oil, U.S. Treasury department officials visiting Delhi said on April 4 that the aim of U.S. sanctions and the oil “price cap” was not to limit the purchase of Russian ‘Ural’ oil, but to limit the revenues made by the “Kremlin”.
According to the officials, who are meeting their counterparts and oil company representatives in Delhi and Mumbai on their visit between April 2 and April 5, the U.S. measures thus far, including a “second phase” of sanctions against oil shipping companies, are having some impact. However, they brushed aside questions about the rising price of Ural oil, now nearing $80 per barrel, and the narrowing of Russian discounts to Indian refiners.
“Our purpose is to limit revenue to Russia but not dictate that no trade can be done in Russian oil,” said Anna Morris, Acting Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the U.S. Treasury Department. “Once Russian oil is refined, from a technical perspective, it is no longer Russian oil. If it is refined in a country and then exported, from a sanctions perspective it belongs to that country, it is not an import from Russia,” Ms. Morris added, responding to a specific question about whether India had been ”oil laundering” Russian energy for European markets, as alleged by a European think-tank CREA report. The Ministry of Petroleum had last year called the report “misleading” and a “deceptive effort to tarnish India’s image”.
