LONDON, March 9. /TASS/. The conflict in the Middle East prompts Western countries to consider the possibility of buying Russian oil, said Janiv Shah, a Vice President of Oil Markets at the Rystad Energy consulting company.
"The market is currently grappling with physical supply being choked off by drone strikes, while Middle Eastern producers are simultaneously hitting a critical point where they must shut in production simply because there is nowhere left to put the oil," he said in a statement, sent to TASS.
"Russian supply remains the ultimate wildcard in this equation; as prices climb, the incentive to reroute that crude through alternative channels like India becomes impossible for the West to ignore, as evidenced by the recent 30-day US waiver," the expert added.
Earlier, the US Treasury Department issued a license allowing India to purchase Russian oil already loaded on tankers at sea within a 30-day period. The license also covers transactions involving petroleum products and supplies of crude that had been loaded onto any vessels through March 5. According to statements by US officials, the decision was made to ease pressure on the global oil market amid the US and Israeli military operation against Iran.
The United States and Israel launched a large-scale military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. At the same time, US leadership openly called on the Iranian population to rise up against their government and seize power. As a result of the strikes, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several other senior figures in the leadership of the Islamic Republic were killed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia were also hit.