“If they introduce limitations on crude oil prices, we are simply going to suspend the supply of hydrocarbons to companies or countries that abide by that measure, because in no way will we work outside of market conditions,” he clarified.
Novak, who was Minister of Energy until 2020, considered the proposal to introduce restrictions on the price of Russian oil as totally absurd.
This constitutes an interference in the market mechanisms of a sphere as important as that of hydrocarbons, which appears as one of the crucial guarantees for energy security in the world, considered the official.
Such attempts will only lead to a destabilization of the oil industry and its market, stressed the deputy head of government.
In the first place, consumers, both American and European, who already pay large sums for energy, will pay the negative consequences for this measure, he declared.
A cap on Russian oil prices could totally destroy that market, Novak said, after the price of a thousand cubic meters of gas surpassed three thousand dollars in Europe, amid unprecedented inflation in that region.
No state of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), nor China or India support the idea of introducing the aforementioned limitations. I don’t see any positive statement about that nonsense from any producer in the oil market, he said.
Furthermore, he clarified that Russia extracts and produces only what can be extracted and sold. Those production indicators are gradually growing and if the companies can find a market, this trend will continue in a positive way, he estimated.
On February 24, President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a special military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, after which Russia was subjected to an economic war by the West, which applied thousands of punitive measures against it.
During the most recent summit of the European Union, it approved a gradual embargo on the purchase of oil from Russia, which supplied more than 25 percent of the crude oil consumed by that bloc, while the United States totally eliminated purchases.
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