Yeah, but I remember reading articles going years back about the oil industry playing games with documentation – there was enormous amounts of stolen oil, tankers and tankers, that would enter the system one way or another.
Here’s a Planet Money episode from a series 10 years back talking about a reporter looking into people selling tankers full of stolen oil. People mixing oil offshore between tanker ships, stuff like that.
I don’t know to what degree the system has changed in the intervening time, but I’d give reasonable odds that it still has a lot of holes in terms of control of oil’s movement, that there are sketchy entities in various countries that will still “launder” oil.
It might make it more costly to move said oil – and at a point, that might be enough. But I’m skeptical that the oil is going to become unmoveable.
That is what Russia is doing, however the West is sanctioning entities involved in this all the time. That increases risk and means extra work. So Russia can not make as much money selling oil like this and if customers have a choice, it is easier to deal with legal oil. So if oil prices fall, then Russia is going to sell less oil.
That is somewhat true for all sanctions. Russia is going to find ways around them, but even then it hurts Russia.
Pssssssst. We will but it in the back just keep it quiet.
That’s what my ex said to the guy she told me not to worry about.
Dumb question: why does china care about US sanctions?
Secondary sanctions. If a Chinese company trades with Russia, it can not trade with the US. That includes things like financing, handling US cargo and so forth. The US is the bigger market. Also the EU has also sanctioned Chinese companies for trading with China. Obviously if there are US sanctions, EU sanctions are much more likely as well.
Because China trades a lot with the US and the EU (the EU is doing similar things). If US (and EU) get mad enough at China they will cut off all trade - everyone will hurt from this, but China probably the most (depending on how follows of course).
The port operators don’t want to be sanctioned, because it would mean losing US business.
