Washington DC March 7 2022: The Biden administration is discussing a potential ban on Russian oil imports in conjunction with its European allies amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a coordinated way at the prospect of banning the import of Russian oil while making sure that there is still an appropriate supply of oil on world markets,” Blinken told CNN’s Jake Tapper March 6 on State of the Union. “That’s a very active discussion as we speak.”
Blinken also acknowledged that the US is adding sanctions on Russia “virtually every day” in coordination with its European partners.
The secretary’s comments mark a turning point for the Biden administration, which has avoided interrupting energy flows from Russia given the tight global oil market and subsequent high US gasoline prices. On Feb. 24, Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy National Economic Council Director Daleep Singh cited Russia’s “systemic importance in the global economy” as the world’s second-highest crude oil producer.
But a ban on Russian oil imports is gaining bipartisan support in the US. On March 3, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Democrat-California, joined various Republican and Democratic lawmakers in supporting such a move.
That same day US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, Democrat-West Virginia, and former committee chair Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican-Alaska, introduced a bill to end various Russian energy imports. The Ban Russian Energy Imports Act would prohibit imports of Russian crude oil, LNG, coal, petroleum and petroleum products, according to a March 3 release.
The bill received bipartisan support from more than a dozen of their Senate colleagues.
