Joe Biden eyes sanctions on Russia’s ‘dark fleet’ of oil ships

In his last weeks in office, Joe Biden is planning sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, targeting the ships carrying Russian oil around the world and bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war chest.

Joe Biden is planning more sanctions on the Russian energy sector. Picture: AFP.

President Biden is considering new sanctions against Russia’s lucrative energy sector in his final weeks in office.

The United States unleashed a wave of damaging measures to choke the Russian economy after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but Mr Biden, 82, had been reluctant to hit the energy sector for fear of a global rise in oil and gas prices. That calculation is believed to have changed.

With US inflation having significantly eased and the election out of the way, Mr Biden is ready to target the “dark fleet” of ships carrying Russian oil around the world and bolstering President Putin’s war chest. According to The Washington Post, those ships would be the main focus of a new sanctions package, alongside Russian oil exporters that have not yet been targeted.

Sources told the newspaper that Mr Biden’s options included revoking a licence allowing banks to process Russian energy transactions.

They added the sanctions would give Donald Trump, the president-elect, greater leverage in negotiations with Putin to end the war in Ukraine. However, it remains to be seen if Mr Trump would welcome the move.

Mr Trump, 78, who has promised to bring the conflict to a swift conclusion, has criticised Mr Biden’s decision to allow Ukrainian forces to use American medium-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory. It is unclear if he would welcome sanctions viewed in Moscow as another escalation.

The sanctions are a change in policy. “The Biden administration has been worried about increasing gas prices and worsening inflation. That was the main constraint on their Russia sanctions policy – the domestic ramifications,” Edward Fishman, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told the Post. “But the election is over, and inflation is under control. The reasons to be this cautious on sanctions don’t apply any more.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 Mr Biden marshalled a forceful response from western allies. This included imposing a cap on the price of Russian oil to restrict profits and drain the financial source of the war effort.

While the “dark fleet” has helped Mr Putin evade some measures, the sanctions have worked to a degree. Inflation in Russia’s war-focused economy is soaring and its central bank has raised interest rates to 21 per cent. The rouble has also been weakened.

Western officials hope that financial pain will allow Ukraine to extract greater concessions from Putin during negotiations.

The Times