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Russia apparently has other buyers for its oil, but those stepping in to pick up the supply left by the U.S and Europe are making a risky move. The U.S. has already banned Russian oil, and while Europeans are considering a full boycott, some already have.
The would-be buyers at the top of the list, India and China, certainly have been aggressive as of late in not only sending tankers to load up on Russian crude at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea but in broadcasting to Western and NATO powers that they feel no shame in doing so.
And if we’re being entirely honest, it’s not like Brussels or Washington nor their respective allies have had much interest in pursuing an Iran-sanctions style punitive regime for Asian buyers of Russian crude.
Aside from sanctions, there is another serious, actually life-threatening, danger.
The Russians have begun a large scale missile and airstrike assault on the city of Odessa.
Now Odessa is important for a number of reasons. It’s the last major port. It is the major port. It is the commercial capital. It is on the way to Moldova and Romania.
But the bottom line is it’s a port, and the Russians are specifically targeting refining port and tank infrastructure, which will–how can I put this delicately–lay bare the idiocy of any plans to export oil from the Black Sea to anywhere else on the planet writ large.
Because now we have the Russians specifically, explicitly going after port infrastructure and specifically energy assets.
So if your corporate plan or your national plan is to rely on the United States and NATO to make the seaways safe so that you can import Russian energy from a war zone where the Russians are bombing energy infrastructure, you should probably get a new gut job, because you’re not very good at your current one.
