Nikkei falls for the fourth consecutive day And oil jumps after Biden’s decision to embargo Russian oil imports:
US President Joe Biden immediately embargoed Russian oil imports,
which caused oil to jump significantly and immediately.
Evest follows market developments in the following report.
Topics
Oil jumps after Biden’s decision to embargo Russian oil imports
Plan to abandon Moscow’s energy resources
Standard & Poor’s Global downgrades Belarus’ credit rating
Nikkei ends trading lower for the fourth consecutive session
Oil jumps after Biden’s decision to embargo Russian oil imports
Oil prices rose rapidly on Wednesday morning after President Joe Biden‘s administration embargoed Russian energy imports to the country amid the military conflict in Ukraine.
“I declare today that the United States is targeting key sectors of the Russian economy: We are embargoing all imports of Russian oil, gas, and energy .
This action has had considerable bipartisan support in Congress, and I hope all Americans will,” Biden said.
Brent crude futures for May rose by $2.89 (2.26%) on the London Futures Exchange, to $130.87 per barrel.
Brent crude rose by $4.77 to $127.98 per barrel on Tuesday.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures’ prices for April in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) rose by $2.36 (1.91%), to $126.06 per barrel.
On March 8, futures rose by $4.3 to $123.7 per barrel.
In 2021, the United States imported about 672,000 barrels of oil and petroleum products per day, about 8% of the total,
according to Lipow Oil Associates.
Earlier, the UK government also announced restrictions on oil purchases from Russia
aimed at abandoning energy resources from Russia by the end of this year.
Plan to abandon Moscow’s energy resources
The European Union, in turn, published a plan to abandon Moscow’s energy resources.
The First Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans,
said that the European Union intended to reduce Russian gas consumption by two-thirds by the end of the current year.
In the meantime, experts point out that the market began punishing the energy complex independently before the actions were announced,
as traders avoided buying oil from Russia.
“The embargo on Russian oil imports has already been introduced to the market without a government decree,” Lipow Oil Associates said in a report.
In the meantime, under the actions taken, fuel prices at fuel stations in the United States have jumped to record levels since 2008.
The average price of gasoline on Tuesday was $4.173 per gallon,
exceeding its July 2008 top price of $4.114 per gallon according to AAA gas prices.
Standard & Poor’s Global downgrades Belarus’ credit rating
S & P Global Ratings reduced Belarus’s long-term foreign and national currency sovereign credit rating from “B” to “CCC,”
and the short-term rating was reduced to “C” from “B.”
In the meantime, the ratings were developed for review with a “negative” outlook.
According to the statement: “In our view, the international sanctions imposed on Belarus,
with regard to its participation in Russian military intervention against Ukraine are severe,
and we expect them to be further tightened.
We believe that these sanctions will seriously undermine the Belarusian economy and pose a major threat to financial stability.
We now believe that Belarus is likely to default over the next 12 months,
ruling out positive developments.
The press release indicates that putting classifications under review,
with a “negative” outlook means that the classification may be downgraded in the coming weeks.
The next version of Belarus’s ratings is scheduled for March 18.
According to agency experts, “It is difficult to estimate the extent of the economic damage done to Blarussia
but we expect it to be very significant.”
Belarus’s political situation
The agency believes that the failure to recognize Western presidential elections in August 2020,
has made Belarus’s political situation “more Russian-dependent” since then.
Experts believe that this “actually forced Mr. Lukashenko (Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko – IF) ,
to agree to Russia’s demands for military assistance in order to remain in power.”
This resulted in the European Union, the United States,
and the United Kingdom imposing unprecedented financial and economic sanctions on Belarus, the press release said.
On 2 March 2022, the European Union approved an additional package of sanctions against various sectors of the Belarusian economy,
including carpentry, cement and minerals.
After the contested 2020 presidential election, exports of petroleum products and fertilizers have already been restricted,
but important exceptions have led, for example, to the continued export or redirection of the most important fertilizers through third countries.
The European Union has now announced that a complete ban will enter into force, which, in our view, could partially stop this trade,” the agency’s experts say.
Commenting on the possibility of Russia providing financial support to Belarus,
the experts believe that “such support may raise more and more doubts,
given the scale of financial market instability and the economic pressure on Russia itself ,
we believe this may have direct negative consequences for Belarus’s ability to service its trade debt.”
In addition, the agency’s experts do not rule out that “this may lead to additional and more severe sanctions,
” given the reported increased participation of Belarus in the Ukrainian conflict.
On March 8, Fitch downgraded the default long-term source classification (IDR) of foreign currency from “B” to “CCC.”
Nikkei ends trading lower for the fourth consecutive session
Japan’s Nikkei index reversed course to end at a 16-month low on Wednesday,
following a decline in wider Asian markets, as investors assessed,
the impact of the worsening conflict in Eastern Europe and the new US embargo on Russian oil.
The Nikkei index fell by 0.3 percent to end at 24717.53,
the lowest level since November 2020 after rising 1.1 percent earlier in the session.
The broader Topix index also pared its gains to end lower by 0.06% at 1758.89.
Both indices closed lower for the fourth session in a row.
Investors warned of the risks of inflation and a slowdown in the world economy in the wake of rising oil prices.
In a move that may limit economic growth, US President Joe Biden imposed,
an immediate ban on other Russian oil and energy imports in response to the invasion,
with strong support from US voters and legislators.