Energy News Beat

More people, more workers, higher incomes, more spending. Banks eager to lend at high rates and collect swipe fees.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Delinquency rates for credit cards 30 days or more past due declined for the second quarter in a row, to 3.08% of total credit-card balances at all commercial banks at the end of Q4, seasonally adjusted, according to Federal Reserve data on yesterday. This includes credit cards issued to prime and subprime-rates borrowers.

The plunge in delinquencies during the pandemic was a result of Free Money flooding households which helped some folks get caught up; and it was also driven in part by limited options of spending, with restaurants, flights, cruises, entertainment venues, etc. being largely shut down.

Then the spending boom took off, the Free Money ended, and delinquency rates normalized, then overshot a little. The high point was in Q2 last year (3.24%), and the delinquency rate has dropped since then:

For prime-rated cardholders, delinquencies of 60-plus days have hovered at around 1%, sometimes a little under sometimes a little over, not seasonally adjusted, right where they had been before the pandemic, according to data from Fitch Ratings, which tracks the performance of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) backed by prime credit card balances.

Credit Card Balances are a measure of spending, not of debt.

Credit cards are the dominant payment system in the US, and credit card statement balances therefore are a measure of spending – including for expensive business trips that are reimbursed.

They’re not a measure of borrowing because most balances are paid off by due date and never accrue interest, but allow cardholders to get their 1% or 2% cashback, airmiles, and other loyalty benefits.

Of the roughly $6 trillion a year that flow through credit cards, only a small portion doesn’t get paid off every month by due date. Credit card balances that are “revolving” – meaning becoming an interest-bearing loan – amounted to $645 billion at the end of Q3, according to the Philadelphia Fed’s report in January. Big-ticket items, such as furniture to equip the new house, are a common example of balances getting run up that then get paid off over the next few months.

Lower-income people rarely have access to credit cards, and usually have to make do with debit cards, or if they have access to credit, the credit limits are low. So in aggregate, they cannot run up the revolving balances; it’s the young high-income dentist with five credit cards, each with a $30,000 credit limit, that can a dent into those balances.

More people, more workers, making more, spending more.

Credit card statement balances rose by $45 billion, or 3.9%, at the end of Q4, not seasonally adjusted, to $1.21 trillion, according to the NY Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report, after blockbuster holiday spending by our Drunken Sailors, as we’ve come to call them lovingly and facetiously. Year-over-year, statement balances were up 7.3% — more people, more workers, making more money, and spending more.

“Other” consumer loans, such as personal loans, payday loans, and Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) loans remained unchanged year-over-year, at $554 billion (blue line).

BNPLs are subsidized by the merchant and are interest-free for the consumer, if they stick to the plan. Merchants like them because the fees can be lower than credit card swipe fees.

Combined, credit card balances and “other” consumer loans rose by 3.1% in Q4 from Q3 and by 4.9% year-over-year, to $1.76 trillion.

The credit-balance-to-income ratio.

The burden of debt on households – accounting for more people, higher employment, and higher incomes – can be tracked with the debt-to-disposable-income ratio, a classic measure of the borrowers’ ability to deal with the burden of debt.

Over the past 20 years, disposable income has surged by 144%, a result of higher employment with workers making more money on average, while balances of credit cards and “other” consumer loans combined has risen by only 58%.

Disposable income, released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, represents an after-payroll-tax cashflow from all income sources: Household income from after-tax wages, plus income from interest, dividends, rentals, farm income, small business income, transfer payments from the government, etc. This is the cash consumers have available every month to spend on housing, food, debt payments, etc. But it excludes capital gains.

In Q4, driven by holiday spending, statement balances are always higher, and then they dip in Q1 as spending sags, seasonally. These balances are not seasonally adjusted:

• In Q4 from Q3: credit balances +3.1%, disposable income +1.3%.
• Year-over-year: credit balances +4.9%, disposable income +5.1%.

As a result, the burden of the combined credit card balances and “other” balances, in terms of the debt-to-disposable-income ratio, increased quarter to quarter due to the seasonal spending burst, but declined year-over-year, and is very low by historical standards, as our Drunken Sailors have learned a lesson coming out of the Great Recession.

Banks eager to lend at high rates and earn swipe fees.

The aggregate credit limit rose by $269 billion year-over-year, to $5.08 trillion, as more card accounts were opened by more workers, and as credit limits were raised on existing cards (blue line).

Over the same period, credit card statement balances rose by $87 billion, to $1.21 trillion (red line)

And the available unused credit surged by $182 billion year-over-year, to a record $3.87 trillion. Following the Financial Crisis, credit tightened as banks were skittish, and available credit plunged by $1 trillion:

In case you missed the earlier parts of the debts of our Drunken Sailors and their debts in Q4:

Here Come the HELOCs: Mortgages, Housing-Debt-to-Income-Ratio, Serious Delinquencies & Foreclosures in Q4 2024

Household Debts, Debt-to-Income Ratio, Serious Delinquencies, Collections, Foreclosures, Bankruptcies: Our Drunken Sailors’ Debts in Q4 2024

Auto Debts, Auto-Loan-to-Income Ratio, Serious Delinquencies for Prime & Subprime: Our Drunken Sailors and their Auto Loans

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The post Our Drunken Sailors and their Credit Cards: Delinquencies, Balances, Burden, and Available Credit in Q4 2024 appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 ‘lunacy,’ specifically criticizing the UK.

​

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday called a pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 a “sinister goal”, and criticized the British government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets. [emphasis, links added]

Former President Joe Biden set a target in 2021 for the United States to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 to help fight climate change, in part by using subsidies to encourage an expansion of clean energy and electric vehicles.

“Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said, speaking via videolink at a conference being held in London.

“The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”

Wright also used a question and answer session at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) event to say his number one priority was for the government to “get out of the way” of the production of oil, gas, and coal.

President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.

“We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue,” he said.

“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don’t have replacements.”

On net zero, he took particular aim at Britain, saying its pursuit of a decarbonized energy system – which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 – had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.

“No one’s going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom anymore. It’s just been displaced somewhere else,” he said.

“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”

Top image of Chris Wright (large screen) at ARC 2025/YouTube screencap

Read rest at Yahoo! News

The post DOE Chief Slams ‘Sinister’ Net Zero Goals As ‘Lunacy,’ Targets UK appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The Consensual Hallucination that drove the EV SPAC mania didn’t die with the EV SPACs; it moved on to other stocks.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Nikola, the “legendary” maker of fuel-cell electric and battery-electric class-8 trucks that had gone public in June 2020 via merger with a SPAC, finally filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy today, as long expected, and intends to liquidate by selling its assets through a bankruptcy auction. It’s “legendary” because:

• Founder and CEO Trevor Milton was sentenced to four years in the hoosegow for lying to investors about the company’s technology;
• It settled fraud charges with the SEC for $125 million;
• Its stock price had given it a valuation of over $28 billion shortly after it went public in a fantastic display of what we have come to call “consensual hallucination;”
• It has lost $3.36 billion since 2019 in ever larger annual increments, on essentially no revenues.

And this long show, produced so elaborately by this outfit, which still calls itself “a global leader in zero-emissions transportation and energy supply and infrastructure solutions,” is over. The stock has long been just about worthless, and became worth even less today, (-40%), to $0.46, adjusted for the 1-for-30 reverse stocks split in June 2024, where each 30 shares became 1 share:

The company today said that it has $47 million in cash on hand, down from $202 million at the end of Q3 on September 30. In Q3, it lost $200 million. For the three quarters in 2024 so far it lost $482 million. In 2023, it lost $800 million. Since 2019, it lost $3.34 billion. It was very good at producing huge losses, we can say that for sure.

As if to add some dry situational humor, in August 2022, Nikola, whose shares by then had already collapsed by 92% from their peak, acquired collapsed EV-battery maker Romeo, which was supplying batteries to Nikola. In the press release back then, Nikola said:

“Integrated commercial vehicle electrification platform is expected to lead to manufacturing excellence and expected annual cost savings of up to $350 million by 2026; reduce non-cell related battery pack costs by 30-40% by the end of 2023.”

You see, the outfit has never once run into a shortage of bullshit to dish out to investors. For the few companies that bought its trucks, Nikola will provide direct service through March 2025, so about another six weeks. And then maybe someone else can step in, please? In the press release today, it said:

“Subject to Court approval, the Company intends to continue certain limited directly provided (non-dealer) service and support operations for trucks currently in the field, including certain HYLA fueling operations through the end of March 2025. Thereafter, the Company will need one or more partners to support such activities.”

EV SPACS that are no longer twitching:

These EV SPACs we have amused ourselves with for the past four-plus years, as one after the other were inducted into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks, were born during the era of free money and what we’ve come to call consensual hallucination, and reality just didn’t matter. Then they started collapsing and filing for bankruptcy, one after the other.

Electric Last Mile Solutions filed for bankruptcy in June 2022, only 12 months after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC. This was kind of a record.

Proterra, which produced a few electric buses, filed for bankruptcy in April 2023, 25 months after having gone public via merger with a SPAC. It once had a market cap of nearly $4 billion.

Lordstown Motors, which tried to make electric pickups, filed for bankruptcy in June 2023, less than three years after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC, during which time it lied to investors to get more of their cash and stay alive.

Fisker filed for bankruptcy in June 2024. It had gone public via merger with a SPAC in October 2020 amid fake promises and ludicrous projections, and then burned $1 billion of investor cash to have some EVs manufactured by contract manufacturer Magna Steyr in Austria. CEO Henrik Fisker had already driven his predecessor company, Fisker Automotive, maker of the plug-in hybrid Fisker Karma, into bankruptcy in 2013.

Lion Electric, a Canadian company that made electric trucks and buses, filed for creditor protection in Canada and for chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US in December 2024. It had gone public in the US via merger with a SPAC in November 2020.

Canoo, which lately called itself a high-tech advanced mobility and energy company, filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in January 2025 and shut down, four years after it had gone public via merger with a SPAC in late 2020. In 2024, it had joined the corporate exodus from California to Texas. It designed some electric vans but never sold any and died with zero revenues in Texas. But before it died, it bought some of the assets of bankrupt EV maker Arrival in the UK.

EV SPACs that are still twitching…

Faraday Future Intelligent Electric [FFIE] issued a bankruptcy warning in May 2024 and withdrew its production forecast. It had gone public via merger with a SPAC in July 2021. Among other things, it became legendary for imposing mega reverse stock splits: In August 2023, a 1-for-80 reverse split, where each 80 shares became one share; in February 2024, a 1-for-3 reverse split, and in August 2024 a 1-for-40 reverse split. In total, 9,600 shares became 1 share. These things are just a bad joke:

Mullen Automotive [MULN] had gone public via SPAC merger in November 2021, and has lost $2.1 billion since then, with no revenues to speak of, other than selling a few imported Chinese vehicles early on. In April 2022, short-seller Hindenburg Research came out with a report that said, “Mullen Is Among the Worst EV Hustles We’ve Seen in A Crowded Field of Contenders.” After some whoppers of reverse stock splits, including another one a week ago, which became effective on February 18, there’s essentially nothing left, and the whole thing is a joke.

VinFast Auto [VFS], a Vietnamese EV maker that’s part of the conglomerate VinGroup, went public in the US via merger with a SPAC in August 2023, with a minuscule float, and the shares of this misbegotten creature then exploded giving it briefly a market cap of over $230 billion. But two months later, the stock had plunged 92%, becoming one of our favorites in the pantheon of Imploded Stocks. They’re currently at $3.82, down 96% from the high. Its market cap has imploded from over $230 billion to a still ridiculous $9 billion.

Lucid Motors [LCID] went public via SPAC merger in 2021. Ayer Third Investment Co., an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has invested $6.4 billion in Lucid, including $1 billion in March 2024, and owns 64% of it. Lucid has lost $10 billion since 2020, but it actually makes and sells higher-end EVs that are well regarded, and can be seen out in the wild.

Polestar [PSNY] went public via merger with a SPAC in June 2022 and started trading at $11, giving it a market cap of $23 billion. The stock is now at $0.21, down 98% from the peak. The company is majority owned and controlled by Chinese giant Geely, which had bought Volvo, which had bought a startup that became Polestar. All the vehicles were made in China until late 2024, when the company started manufacturing the Polestar 3 at its factory in South Carolina.

Rivian is not part of this lineup because it went public via classic IPO, not SPAC merger, in November 2021. In trying to ramp up mass-production, it has burned through many billions of dollars, but has three models – a pickup truck, an SUV, and a deliver van – that are well regarded and can be seen in the wild.

It started out with Amazon as one of its backers and huge customer for its commercial vans. It has now made a deal with Volkswagen that’s bringing in more cash. Today, shares [RIVN] trade at $14, down by 93% from its peak in November 2021.

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The post The Collapse of the EV SPACs: Nikola Joins EV SPAC Bankruptcy Lineup. Here Are Those Already Bankrupt, and Those Not Yet appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The oil market is becoming increasingly numb to the array of changes that Donald Trump is trying to make now that he’s US President again.

Trump spent his first weeks in office railing against OPEC, seeking an end to the war in Ukraine, and threatening tariffs against some of the main crude suppliers to the US. All those things could have major consequences for supply and demand in the oil market.

But rather than causing price swings, the futures market is flat-lining. A gauge of implied volatility for benchmark Brent futures — a measure of how far traders expect oil prices to swing — fell to its lowest level since July this week.

“The oil market is showing signs of disorientation in the face of the sheer volume of new policy stances,” Standard Chartered analysts including Emily Ashford wrote this week. “Faced with so much information and the realization that a single social media post could move the market significantly in either direction at any time, many traders have responded by reducing their risk exposure.”

To be clear, an underlying lack of volatility predates Trump’s return to the White House. Even unprecedented sanctions against Russia by the Biden administration quickly lost their impact.

The OPEC+ producer group continues to keep barrels off the market, which has the twin effect of lowering supplies enough to keep a floor under prices, while simultaneously meaning there is plenty of spare capacity available to meet unexpected disruptions.

Although prices briefly rallied when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil imports, they have since fallen as the US attempts to strike a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

In between that, there have been overtures around a maximum pressure strategy on Iranian oil exports, as well as pledges to boost US production and fill up the nation’s strategic oil reserves. All have failed to dramatically shake the market’s outlook so far.

Brent futures have stayed anchored around the $75-a-barrel mark in recent months and so far in February have swung in a band of less than $4. Speculators have also posted one of the largest pullbacks in net-bullish wagers in years over the past three weeks.

Source: Bloomberg

The post Trump’s Policy Deluge Is Causing Paralysis in the Oil Market appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Iranian crude oil flows to China have rebounded this month after a U.S. crackdown on shipments launched in late 2024 decimated them in January. In a last-minute push to sanction Iran, the Biden admin blacklisted a number of tankers, trading entities, and shipping companies as participants in sanctioned oil trade.

The February average of Iranian oil exports to its biggest buyer is set to average 1.74 million barrels daily, according to preliminary data from Kpler cited by Bloomberg. The figure is an 86% increase from January flows.

The boost in shipments was enabled by the opening of new receiving terminals and more ship-to-ship transfers, the Bloomberg report noted.

The Trump administration has threatened to return to the maximum pressure approach of Trump’s first term in a bid to force Iran to give u developing a nuclear weapon. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the target is to squeeze Iranian oil exports to a tenth of their current levels.

Kpler said in a recent analysis that the return to a maximum pressure campaign against Iran on the part of Washington was likely to weaken oil exports to China, at least for a while. “Some buyers, particularly larger Chinese privately owned refiners, are likely to steer clear of such dealings as a precaution in the near term,” due to higher prices resulting from workarounds to avoid U.S. sanctions, Kpler analyst Homayoun Falakshahi wrote.

China’s private oil refiners, the so-called teapots, are key buyers of Iran’s sanctioned crude, and the two sides have established a trade relationship favorable for both. Iran gets to sell its crude that nearly everyone else shuns, while China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots, get cheap oil. However, the tougher U.S. squeeze on Iran’s oil industry will inevitably lift prices, which would affect buying decisions, as noted by Kpler.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

History of Iran Oil Shipments from Grok on X:

The post Iranian Oil Exports to China are rolling appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Diamondback Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: FANG) on Tuesday announced a deal to buy Double Eagle IV Midco in an acquisition valued at about $4 billion, which gives the buyer increased presence in the Midland Basin in the top-oil producing U.S. formation, the Permian.

Diamondback Energy has signed a definitive purchase agreement to buy certain subsidiaries of Double Eagle IV Midco, LLC in exchange for approximately 6.9 million shares of Diamondback common stock and $3 billion of cash, the company said, confirming earlier reports of the acquisition.

“Double Eagle is the most attractive asset remaining in the Midland Basin,” Diamondback chairman and CEO Travis Stice said in a statement.

“With 407 locations adjacent to our core position, this largely undeveloped asset adds high-quality inventory that immediately competes for capital.”

Diamondback expects to fund the cash portion of the transaction through a combination of cash on hand, borrowings under the company’s credit facility and/or proceeds from term loans and senior notes offerings.

For Diamondback, this would be the second major deal in a year, after it took over Endeavor Energy Resources in 2024 in a deal with a price tag of $28 billion.

Concurrent with the Double Eagle deal, Diamondback also announced today it is committing to sell at least $1.5 billion of non-core assets to accelerate pro forma debt reduction in order to maintain a strong balance sheet. Diamondback expects to reduce net debt to $10 billion and, long term, maintain leverage of $6 billion to $8 billion.

Last year, the shale space saw a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, with the total hitting $105 billion. That was lower than the $192 billion in deals struck in 2023 but still a substantial sum.

This year, a slowdown in M&A, due to a lack of available reasonably-priced targets, is set to continue, according to energy analytics firm Enverus. Merger activity fell in the last quarter of 2024, but natural gas opportunities could help acquisitions rebound this year, Enverus said.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

From David Blackmon’s Subsack – 

Andrew Dittmar, Director at Enverus, said in an email that the deal means “Diamondback has taken over the mantel of being the premier large Permian pure play with broadly comparable scale to Pioneer at the time of its sale.” Diamondback’s market capitalization with the Double Eagle value added in would amount today to roughly $50 billion as compared to the $59.5 billion value of ExxonMobil’s buyout of Pioneer.

In its release on the deal, Diamondback highlighted the fact that the deal means it now holds roughly 40,000 net acres with a long-term run rate of 27 Mboe/d, of which 69% is oil, in the central fairway of the Midland Basin. Dittmar points out that this enhanced position means Diamondback ranks as the second-largest Midland Basin acreage holder behind ExxonMobil.

The deal for Double Eagle is in keeping with the overarching “bigger is better” trend that has largely driven the rapid consolidation in the Permian region over the last half-decade. Diamondback Energy has been a leader in this process, growing via a succession of acquisitions involving highly contiguous acreage positions to enhance economies of scale and drive down overall costs.

Noting that Diamondback appears to have paid a premium for the Double Eagle acreage and production, Dittmar says that is “not surprising given demand for assets in the Permian contrasted with few opportunities.”

As the number of Permian-focused corporate producers has diminished over time, acquiring companies have increasingly sought out privately held producers for growth opportunities. But now, after several years of that trend holding dominance, Dittmar points out few similar opportunities remain.

“Buying private assets has been fundamental to Permian Basin M&A, but after three years of furious consolidation there are very few remaining opportunities,” Dittmar writes. “Remaining private companies with high-quality drilling inventory like Fasken Oil & Ranch in the Midland Basin and Mewbourne Oil in the Delaware Basin are multi-generation family companies not necessarily interested in a sale like the private equity-built E&Ps.”

Dittmar also points out that, “in the past, private equity firms would reenter the play after a sale, but with inventory increasingly locked up by big companies not interested in selling, that has become far more challenging.”

Calling Double Eagle “the most attractive asset remaining in the Midland Basin,” Diamondback Chairman and CEO Travis Stice added that his management team has “worked tirelessly over the last thirteen years to position Diamondback to have the longest duration of high quality, low-breakeven inventory; a position we are solidifying with today’s announcement.” Stice also committed to divest at least $1.5 billion of non-core assets to accelerate pro forma debt reduction as part of the transaction.

The Bottom Line

A sober assessment of remaining Permian targets indicates this may be Stice’s last chance to announce a big transaction for awhile. Unless one of the family-owned independents decides the time has come to sell, or one of the really large independents like Devon Energy or Diamondback itself becomes a takeover target, the era of “bigger is better” could entering its final stages.

As Dittmar pointed out in late January, “finding a good strategic fit between assets and getting management team alignment has gotten more challenging. The industry will continue to consolidate, but likely not at the same breakneck pace seen during the last two years.”

Still, it is important to keep in mind something a wise industry colleague told me years ago: The only thing certain in the oil and gas industry is that nothing is certain.

The post Diamondback Boosts Midland Basin Presence With $4-Billion Acquisition appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Ending the conflict could open up “historic” opportunities for US-Russian relations, the US secretary of state has said

The post West will have to reconsider Russia sanctions as part of Ukraine peace deal – Rubio appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the meeting with the US delegation as “useful” as both sides look to re-establish contacts

The post Rebuilding ties, finding common ground, Ukraine peace negotiations: key takeaways from Russia-US talks in Riyadh appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

The UK Government has relaunched the Net Zero Council with a plan to help various sectors accelerate towards net zero targets and support thousands of jobs.

The relaunch reflects a new “mission-led approach”, ensuring government actively engages with a broad range of industry leaders and stakeholders to drive the progress towards net zero.

The announcement comes as a meeting focused on agreeing the Council’s priorities for 2025 to 2026, which will include a new focus on providing expert input to inform government strategies relating to net zero.

The Council, co-chaired by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Co-operative Group CEO Shirine Khoury-Haq, brings together leaders from some of the UK’s biggest businesses, charities and organisations as well as trade unions and local authorities.

New members include representatives from the Trades Union Congress and Design Council and major industry players such as Siemens, Nestlé and HSBC have returned to the Council alongside new members including the Local Government Association and Aviva Investors.

The Council will provide advice to the government to support net zero strategy development, co-ordinate action to address cross-economy challenges and maximise the economic and societal opportunities offered by the net zero transition.

Its priorities for the coming year also include supporting SMEs to decarbonise while maximising the benefits of the transition as well as informing the government’s approach to public engagement and developing products to support public participation with net zero.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: “Businesses and leaders across our country recognise that clean power and accelerating towards net zero represents the economic opportunity of the 21st century.

“It is one which will protect bills, create jobs, and tackle the climate crisis. This Council is about mission-driven leadership, bringing government, business and civil society together to turn ambition into action.

“By working in partnership, we can drive the investment, innovation and industrial transformation needed to make the UK a clean energy superpower.”

The post UK Government relaunches Net Zero Council  appeared first on Energy Live News.

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EU envoys agreed on a further round of sanctions on Russia on Wednesday amid conflicting signals from the United States about the future of Washington’s own  regime of restrictive measures aimed at Moscow.

The new sanctions package – the EU’s 16th since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – includes import bans on aluminium, export restrictions on chromium and other items used to produce factory equipment, and the removal of multiple Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

It also includes additional measures to clamp down on Russia’s circumvention of the G7’s oil price cap, which limits the sale of Russian seaborne oil to $60 per barrel.

The move, which came the day after US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss an end to the three-year-long Ukraine war, followed a meeting of EU finance ministers on Tuesday in Brussels at which officials reaffirmed their support for the bloc’s current sanctions policy.

One European official familiar with Tuesday’s discussions said that it is “very likely” that the EU’s sanctions policy “could evolve independently” of the US over the coming months, as it remains unclear what course US President Donald Trump might steer after his initial steps toward patching up ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I did not detect any reduction in commitment to the implementation of our sanctions package,” the official said. “And therefore I don’t see it likely that if the US was to go in a different direction we would follow.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had initially suggested after his meeting with Russian officials on Tuesday that Washington could ease sanctions on Moscow as part of any ceasefire arrangement – and hinted that the EU might be compelled to follow suit.

“Sanctions are all the result of this conflict,” Rubio said, noting that “in order to bring an end to any conflict there has to be concessions made by all sides”.

“But there are other parties that have sanctions,” he added. “The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed.”

But Bloomberg subsequently reported that Rubio had privately informed several European counterparts that Washington would maintain its raft of sanctions on Moscow until the war is over, citing people familiar with the matter.

A State Department spokesperson also confirmed on Tuesday that Rubio had briefed ministers from France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, “immediately” after the meeting in Riyadh.

“The group agreed to remain in close contact as we work to achieve a durable end to the conflict in Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.

The EU’s sanctions require unanimous support among the EU’s 27 member states and must be renewed every six months.

One EU diplomat noted that Trump’s close relationship with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – who has repeatedly denounced the EU’s sanctions – could lead to “problems” if Washington pressured Brussels to lift sanctions on Moscow.

“If this scenario would happen [where] Trump asked EU to ease up with the sanctions, I’m pretty sure that there will be at least one head of state who will be willing to do that,” the diplomat said.

Polish Finance Minister Andrzej Domański, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, also said on Tuesday that Warsaw is sticking with its controversial push to confiscate the €210 billion in frozen Russian assets currently held in the EU.

Such a move has been fiercely resisted by Belgium, where the vast majority of the assets are based. Belgian leaders have argued that seizing the assets is legally dubious and could threaten the financial stability of the eurozone.

Confiscation is, however, staunchly supported by many Eastern European countries and was also strongly endorsed by the previous US administration led by Joe Biden.

The profits generated by these assets are currently being used to finance a $50 billion loan to Kyiv, following an agreement last year by G7 countries.

“Of course, we do believe that these assets should be used to benefit Ukraine and not only the profits, but also the assets [themselves],” Domański said at a Bloomberg-hosted event.

“Having said that, of course, there are countries that express their position which is different,” he added. “So we are in ongoing discussions – it would be premature to say what could be the end for that.”

European Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovksis, who has also repeatedly refused to rule out seizing the assets, also suggested yesterday that the EU’s sanctions policy could evolve independently of the US.

“I think it’s very clear with the moves of the current Trump administration that EU will need to take issues related to its security more [into] its own hands,” he said, adding that this “also concerns sanctions policy”.

The EU has banned €91.2 billion worth of imports from Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as €48 billion in exports, according to the European Commission.

The new sanctions package is set to be formally endorsed by EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

Source: Euractiv.com

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The post EU forges ahead with ‘independent’ Russia sanctions policy amid mixed US signals appeared first on Energy News Beat.