MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. Market players believe that sanctions imposed by the US on the Russian oil and gas sector this Friday will not result to a significant decline in country’s oil exports but will increase logistical costs and discounts, Research Director of the Institute of Energy and Finance Alexey Belogoryev told TASS.
The extent of sanctions’ effect on exports will become fully clear in several weeks at the earliest. "The Brent price hike to $80 per barrel reflects this uncertainty: the market stops at the upper limit of the price corridor established during the last six years but the share of Russian premium in this growth is still small, in my opinion. If market players are indeed concerned of the significant dip in Russian oil exports, the appreciation of prices would have been much more abrupt," the expert said.
The most serious part of the sanctions package is related to tankers and US sanctions can indeed disrupt the logistics of Russian supplies for some time, Belogoryev said. "As a minimum, they will lead to the notable growth of transportation costs and hence to the increase of discounts for Russian oil - the spread in prices of shipping in Russian ports and unloading in ports of consignees," the expert added.