Oil prices jumped and energy companies helped the FTSE 100 to a record high after Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers.
Brent crude increased by 5.7% to $66.13 a barrel after the news of the fresh restrictions on Rosneft and Lukoil, as the US president ramps up pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
The jump in oil price also boosted shares in the energy companies Shell and BP by about 3%, which in turn helped to drive the FTSE 100 to a record high of 9,594.82.
By contrast, stock markets in Moscow plunged. The MOEX Russia Index, which tracks 40 of the country’s largest publicly traded companies, fell as much as 3.6%, while the RTS Index, which tracks Russian stocks in US dollars, fell by a similar amount.
All assets in the US belonging to Russia’s two largest fossil fuel companies have been frozen, and American companies and individuals will be barred from doing business with them.
The US is also threatening secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions that do business with Rosneft and Lukoil, which could include banks that facilitate sales of Russian oil in China, India and Turkey.
In a sign that the pressure may already be having an impact, reports suggest that refiners in China and India are preparing to sharply reduce their imports of Russian oil.
The Chinese state oil majors PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC and Zhenhua Oil have suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil in the short term over concerns about the latest sanctions, according to sources cited by Reuters.
Reliance Industries, the top Indian buyer of Russian crude, plans to reduce or halt imports, according to Reuters and the Financial Times.
India has been one of the biggest buyers of discounted seaborne Russian crude oil since the war in Ukraine, prompting Trump to impose punitive 50% tariffs on most Indian goods in August.
Wednesday’s sanctions on Russia are the first Trump has imposed against the country since he returned to the White House in January. The US president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, described the measures as “tremendous”.
He said: “These are very big ones that are against their two big oil companies, and we hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”
Trump added that he hoped Putin would continue negotiations over Ukraine. “Hopefully he’ll become reasonable, and hopefully Zelenskyy will be reasonable,” he said. “You know, it takes two to tango, as I say, and we’ll find out.”
The EU also announced it was imposing fresh sanctions, including a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.
Brussels added two Chinese refiners along with Chinaoil Hong Kong, a trading arm of PetroChina, to its Russia sanctions list, its official journal showed on Thursday.
The two refineries are Liaoyang Petrochemical and Shandong Yulong Petrochemical. They have a combined capacity of 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) and account for 3% of China’s 19m bpd refining capacity.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said the US administration was “prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The British government imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil last week. The EU has imposed sanctions on Rosneft, which is owned by the Russian state, but not Lukoil, which is privately owned. That is largely because of exemptions for Hungary and Slovakia, which buy Russian oil.
Trump also confirmed on Wednesday that he had cancelled a summit with Putin. He said: “It didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future.”
The oil price is now on track for its biggest rise since July, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank.
Jorge León, the head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, a leading energy consultancy, described the US sanctions against Russia as “a significant and unprecedented escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against Moscow”.
He added: “The sharp rise in oil prices following the announcement underscores market fears that Russian crude exports – particularly to India, one of its key customers – could fall sharply.”
The price rise could also raise the prospect of “major disruptions” to Russian crude production and exports that would cause oil market prices to rise higher, he said. “The big question now is whether Washington’s latest sanctions will be enough to draw Moscow back to the negotiating table – and, if they fail to do so, what options remain to increase pressure without crossing the line into open confrontation,” León said.
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