Hungary holds up EU plan to ban Russian oil

Hungary holds up EU plan to ban Russian oil

Good evening

An attempt by Brussels to tighten the screws on the Kremlin’s Ukrainian war machine by imposing an EU-wide ban on Russian oil imports is being held up by Hungary.

The EU measures, which need to win the backing of all 27 member states, are part of a sixth package of sanctions. The oil ban would be phased in over the next 18 months, with Hungary and Slovakia given the most leeway — until the end of 2023 — because of their current reliance on Russian supplies. The phased approach was commended by the FT editorial board as a way of enabling diplomacy for the EU to secure alternative supplies and sort out logistics. But Hungary said today it would reject the proposal unless there was an exception for countries like itself, that import Russian crude via pipelines.

Russia has been preparing its own back-up plans, as the FT revealed, selling cut price oil to China’s independent refineries.

News of the planned new EU sanctions pushed international oil prices higher: Brent rose as much as 2.5 per cent to $107.58 a barrel.

The energy crisis created by the Ukraine conflict has been good for the broader oil and gas sector. A drilling boom in