Tokyo’s proposal to place a cap on Russian oil prices would lead to significantly less oil on the market and could drastically push oil prices higher, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned on Tuesday.
Responding to the idea put forward by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that Japan “would have neither oil nor gas from Russia, as well as no participation in the Sakhalin-2 LNG project” if Tokyo decided to go through with the proposal.
“Japanese PM Kishida recently blurted out that the price ceiling for Russian oil would be set at half its current price. Plus, a mechanism will be created that will not allow the purchase of our oil at a price higher than the established one,” the former president wrote.
He went on to explain what this would mean when “translated from Japanese into Russian,” writing that such a move would severely limit the amount of oil available on the market, causing its price to be “much higher.”