US president bans Russian oil and gas imports

US President Joe Biden has officially announced a ban on the imports of Russian oil and natural gas, in yet another effort to put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

“With this, we are striking the main artery of the Russian economy,” Biden said in a White House speech. “The American people are giving a crushing blow to Putin’s war machine,” he continued.

The US imports 400,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia, corresponding to between 7% and 9% of the total US demand for oil. During the same speech, Biden acknowledged that Europeans might find it more difficult to ban Russian oil and gas imports, which correspond, on average, to 13% and 40% of the European imports of these products, respectively.

The move comes in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for the United States and other Western countries to reduce imports. The US decided only after consulting with European Union (EU) countries that rely heavily on Russian energy.

Until now, Russia’s energy sector had been exempt from the sanctions imposed on the country as a result of the Ukraine invasion due to concerns about the impact on markets. However, Democrats and Republicans alike were putting pressure on Biden to impose a ban on Russian energy imports to punish Putin for the invasion.

The US president acknowledged that the measure may increase fuel prices in the country and harm Biden’s Democratic Party in the upcoming elections, which will try to maintain its now slim majority in the House and Senate in November.

“We know that the price of gasoline at the pumps has already risen by 75 cents [a gallon] in recent days, but we will do our best to mitigate these effects,” the president said.

Biden announced that he would release oil from strategic US reserves to mitigate the effects of the decision.

The American president also stated that he expects Congress to release $2 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine. “The United States will take care of refugees so that the cost is not borne solely by our European partners,” Biden stated.

“Putin’s Russia will come out of this war smaller, while all of us will come out even bigger,” he added, noting that the ruble, the Russian currency, is already worth just 0.01 cents — half the price it had two weeks ago.

Source: Valor Econômico

To read the full original article, please go to:

https://valor.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2022/03/08/presidente-dos-eua-deve-anunciar-hoje-proibicao-as-importacoes-de-petroleo-da-russia.ghtml

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