The decree signed on March 31 by President Vladimir Putin, obliging buyers from “unfriendly” nations to pay for Russian gas in rubles, from April 1, will finally have been postponed. The text provides for requiring customers to open an account with a Russian banking entity, to buy rubles from the Moscow exchange exchange and thus to settle their raw material bill in national currency. The supporters of the boycott would therefore be obliged to carry out their transactions in rubles by contributing paradoxically to the appreciation of these. At the same time, they would deposit currencies in the local Russian circuit.
It looks like April Fool’s Day, but it’s all too real. Earlier this week, Dimitri Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, announced that the time was over for “charity”. It was either that or the blue gold embargo. The purpose, according to the newspaper Vedomosti, would not be so much to impose the ruble as a currency of exchange, but to avoid having funds confiscated by extrajudicial measures.
All of the sanctions adopted to date have been adopted by executives or civil servants, outside of any resolution of public international, criminal or commercial law. Faced with Russian retaliatory measures, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borell, had retorted that the sanctions which are adopted from the European Union are based on “clear standards” and “can be challenged in court”. The ukases marked with the seal of the European Union would be licit if not legal, the others arbitrary.
In this inverted policy of the velvet glove in an iron hand, Russia, while knowing that it should expect nothing in return from the West, not even reasonable mediation within the framework of the conflict which opposes it to the ukraine, shows for the moment, a certain temperance, even a magnanimity. In fact, the Federation has not even stopped supplying Ukraine with gas since the beginning of the conflict.
According to the International Energy Agency, dependence on Russian gas has increased from 25% in 2009 to 32% in 2021 for Europe and the United Kingdom. In the countries of Eastern Europe, this dependence reaches almost 100%. Russia is Germany’s main supplier at 46%. As for Austria, this dependence exceeds 60%. In this context, the changeover to the ruble appears as a revolutionary decision in the face of the policy of sanctions. Nature willed that the two main powers of a world that has once again become politically bipolar, are also those that find themselves at the head of gas production. Russia and the United States behind.
Although according to the United States Energy Information Agency this week will have marked a historic increase in the sale of natural gas for the United States, the plan sold by Joe Biden, to come to the “aid” to the ‘Europe, will take at least three years of expert advice before it becomes effective. Time to build the infrastructure for LNG carriers transporting LNG and the ports to receive them.
You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner in economics to understand that if the world’s superpower in fossil energy, the first in gas, the second in oil behind Saudi Arabia, closes the floodgates of what are sometimes called the gas station of Europe, the scenario of a depression, more than a recession, becomes reality. However, Russia does not appear to be in a hurry to exercise this blackmail, even though it has immediate alternative options for the placement of its raw materials: Asia. It thwarts the logistical difficulties specific to delivery, countering them with a kind of dumping effect in the face of rising market prices, selling at discount prices. Since the beginning of March, five cargo ships of Ural crude, or 18 million barrels of oil, have been shipped to the Asian giant, according to Matt Smith, an analyst at Kpler, in a statement to CNBC. Half of the deliveries for the year 2021.
It should also be noted that so far no Asian company (India Consortium, Sodecco, Sinopec, Mitsumi, Silk Road Fund, Mitsubishi, Petro Vietnam), not even from Japan, has announced a divestment in Russia, arguing that it wants to protect its assets. While British Petroleum, the main foreign operator in Russia, is withdrawing from a strategic position, one which granted it 19.5% of Rosneft, which guaranteed it a third of its production and two places on the Management Committee. Its shares are currently unsaleable. This divestment only harms the British, like all Western divestments, for that matter. The Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese will quickly compensate at a discount price for an expensive entry ticket paid for and badly sold.