US imposes sanctions on Russia's leading tanker group Sovcomflot
By Timothy Gardner and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russia's leading tanker group Sovcomflot as Washington seeks to reduce Russia's revenues from oil sales it can use to support the invasion of Ukraine, the Treasury Department said on Friday.
Russia is one of he world's top oil exporters and the sanctions were the latest in an effort by Western countries to add costs on the shipping of its crude oil and oil products while keeping the petroleum flowing to global markets.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control also designated 14 crude oil tankers vessels as property in which Sovcomflot has an interest.
OFAC issued general licenses allowing the offloading of crude oil, or other cargoes, from the 14 vessels for 45 days, and allowing transactions with all other Sovcomflot tankers.
«Sovcomflot as a whole, as a parent company, has been implicated in price cap violations in addition to deceptive activity,» a senior Treasury official told reporters in a call.
The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those targeted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.
The G7, the EU and Australia imposed a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil in late 2022. It bans the use of Western maritime services such as transport, insurance and financing for shipments of oil priced at or above the cap.
«The designations today are basically intended to take some of their vehicles for doing that off the table, which is going to force them to invest more in spending, in creating new avenues for getting that oil out,» the Treasury official said.
The Western sanctions and the cap have forced some of Russian oil sales to rely on a so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers that ship consumers
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