New sanctions on buyers of Russian oil could disrupt crude flows, energy trader Gunvor’s global head of research and analysis, Frederic Lasserre, said on Monday.
His comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump, who is seeking to broker an end to the Ukraine conflict, said he is ready to move to a second phase of sanctioning Russia to hit Moscow’s oil revenue and bring President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the U.S. and the European Union could heap “secondary tariffs on the countries that buy Russian oil.”
India is the top buyer of Russian oil after China.
“President Trump is serious about going for much tougher sanctions,” said Lasserre, adding that tough sanctions on Russian and Iran could hit supplies by more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd),” Lasserre said at the APPEC conference.
“But the issue is the nature of sanctions… And today, if you don’t impose any sanctions on the buyers, on China and India, then the rest is pure rhetoric.”
Trump, has said India’s oil imports are helping fund Moscow’s war effort and imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India.
New Delhi has said its purchases of Russian oil have kept the markets in balance and prevented global oil prices from surging.
India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said India will continue to buy Russian oil as it proves economical.
Lasserre said the meetings and speeches of leaders of China, Russia, India, Brazil at recent summts indicate that they are not going to accept “any more” sanctions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping last week hosted more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, including Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Putin and Modi were seen holding hands at the summit as they walked toward Xi before all three men stood side by side.
(Reporting by Florence Tan and Mohi Narayan; Writing by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Sonali Paul)