- Wednesday, March 12, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
US ENERGY secretary Jennifer Granholm is set to use talks with nations such as India and Japan to gather support for a new effort to cap prices for Russian oil. Critics, however, are not convinced.
Granholm is scheduled to raise the issue during a meeting with her counterparts from the other three member-nations of the Quad group – Australia, India and Japan – during a visit to Sydney, Australia, where cooperation on supply of critical minerals required for clean energy technologies will also be taken up, Bloomberg reported.
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“We want to put on the table the option of joining a buyers’ group that will have greater market power to be able to lower the price, and therefore lower the price of Russian oil and lower the profits to Putin,” Granholm said in an interview in Sydney, the report added.
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The strategy vis-à-vis Russia, which has been slammed over its adventure in Ukraine, was raised among the leaders of the Group of Seven at the summit in Germany held last month. It is aimed at restricting the revenue that Moscow earns from exporting oil without driving Russian cargoes off the markets across the globe. The move would cap prices by banning insurance and transportation services required to ship Russian crude and petroleum products unless the oil is bought at less than an agreed price, the Bloomberg report said.
The intention is to cap the price on Russian oil at between $40 and $60 per barrel, Bloomberg reported earlier in July citing informed sources.
India, which is a time-tested ally of Russia, has increased purchases fuel from Russia in recent times, spending a whopping $8.8 billion on petroleum and coal imports between February 24 and June 30 – an amount which is more than it spent for all Russian goods last year. Japan also remains heavily reliant on Russian energy.
Critics of the strategy feel the price-cap plan is too complex to be successful and doubted whether nations such as India and China, who are among the top buyers of Russian oil, would agree to it.
