BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 2. For Europe the interruptions in oil supplies in general would be less disruptive than the termination of gas supplies, the researcher in EU energy and climate policy at the European Policy Center (EPC) Marco Giuli told Trend.
According to the researcher, oil is a relatively interchangeable product, although prices should be expected to rise, since a significant part of Russian oil may experience difficulties with access to the world markets.
As Giuli explained, this would be the result of the self-sanctioning of the buyers, or of the the exposure of reorganized Russian flows to secondary sanctions.
“For instance, Russian would need to lease tankers and take insurance on global markets in a situation where operators might not be willing to enter business with Russia. Disruptions are to be expected for the global refining industry, as refineries may not be ready for massive reconfigurations of global flows. As non-European buyers would not be able or willing to absorb all Russian supply and Russia has limited storage capacity available, the shutdown of some of Russian production can be expected,” Giuli said.
Meanwhile, talking about the response from the OPEC+ in this context, the researcher at the EPC noted that a reduction in supplies from Russia would lead to a very high price environment, which would negatively affect the discipline among OPEC+ members, but in fact only a few of them have spare increase capacity.
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