By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com

Russia is accelerating its natural gas exports to China through the Power of Siberia pipeline, aiming to hit maximum capacity by the end of 2024—a full year ahead of schedule. Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy giant, has agreed with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to boost December supplies, reaching the pipeline’s designed capacity of 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually.

This increase in gas flows reflects Russia’s pivot towards China, as Moscow seeks to replace lost European buyers following its invasion of Ukraine. Gazprom has already ramped up deliveries, shipping 20.8 bcm in the first eight months of 2024, according to Bloomberg calculations, closing in on last year’s total of 22.7 bcm.

In addition to the Power of Siberia pipeline, Russia is developing a second pipeline from its Far East, expected to add 10 bcm per year by 2027. However, negotiations for the proposed Power of Siberia 2, which could push total Russian gas exports to China to nearly 100 bcm annually, have stalled over pricing disagreements. A recent decision by Mongolia’s government not to include funding for Power of Siberia 2’s pipeline construction in its five-year economic plan has widely been understood to mean that China is rethinking the pipeline project.

While China has emerged as Russia’s top energy customer, Beijing is reassessing its dependence on Russian gas. Geopolitical concerns, the risk of over-reliance, and China’s interest in diversifying its energy sources are driving this reconsideration.

Despite this, Russia remains eager to grow its pipeline exports to China, as European markets continue to shrink under sanctions and alternative energy investments. The ongoing discussions and developments signal a significant shift in Russia’s energy strategy, with China playing a central role in its future plans.

NATO’s tiny Baltic states have continued to be among the most hawkish within the alliance when it comes to ‘confronting Russia’ and making war plans.

One Lithuanian official is making headlines for saying that eventual NATO war with Russia is inevitable, and that Europe must begin preparing now. Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister and the EU’s new defense commissioner, has told Reuters that Europe must prepare to go to war with Russia withing the next six to eight years.

“Defense ministers and NATO generals agree that Vladimir Putin could be ready for confrontation with NATO and the EU in 6-8 years,” Kubilius said in his capacity as the European Union’s first-ever Defense Commissioner.

“If we take these assessments seriously, then that is the time for us to properly prepare, and it is a short one. This means we have to take quick decisions, and ambitious decisions,” he added.

Kubilius’ appointment is seen as an indicator that the EU is getting more serious about war-spending as a bloc, though EU leadership has no decision-making capacity when it comes to NATO.

Apparently he’s unconcerned with the dangers of nuclear-armed confrontation. Russia has said it would deploy nuclear weapons if its territory and population faces existential threat of annihilation. 

Kubilius described further in his statement, “The European Union won’t have defense plans or military leadership, like NATO does — but the European Union has instruments to get larger financing, which NATO doesn’t.”

He has called for a total investment of a gargantuan sum: 500 billion euros in the coming years in order to ramp-up the readiness of European militaries.

European Parliament has recently passed a largely symbolic resolution approving the Zelensky government’s use of long-range weapons to attack insdie Russia.

The head of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, has responded by saying “What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons.”

Thinks looking bleak: A newly-created EU leadership position and the very first directive issued relates to future war with Russia…

The European Union has created a new post of defense commissioner, but the task facing former Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubilius, the man named for the job, is formidable. https://t.co/XrOpHh0ziG

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) September 20, 2024

Clearly peace is on the minds of few. The only way to avoid escalation leading to nuclear-armed showdown in the heart of Europe is the negotiating table, but both Moscow and Kiev have of late issued statements denying that they are even close to sitting down together to seek settlement or ceasefire.

Authored by Vivek Sun via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The closure of a Bitcoin mining facility in the Norwegian town of Hadsel has led to a 20% increase in electricity bills for residents.

The mine was shut down after the municipality declined to renew its permit due to noise complaints.

Kryptovault operated the mining facility for 20% of local power company Noranett’s revenue.

With the loss of its largest customer, Noranett is raising prices for households to compensate.

Locals had complained for years about noise from the mine’s cooling fans. However, due to the closure, residents are now faced with paying several hundred dollars more per year for electricity.

“When such a large individual customer switches off overnight, it has an impact,” said a Noranett manager.

The company estimates bills could rise by up to $300 monthly.

While unhappy about the price hikes, Hadsel’s mayor said the municipality must deal with the consequences of losing a major power consumer under the regulations. He said the town will now seek new projects to utilize the excess energy capacity.

The situation highlights how Bitcoin mining can help reduce electricity costs by distributing grid expenses to a larger customer base. Bitcoin mine’s continued operation would have prevented the rate spike for citizens.

The incident has fueled debate in Norway about imposing restrictions on energy-intensive mining.

This could force miners to relocate operations abroad and can further lead to an increase in prices for residents. 

Via Remix News,

Despite being offered €31,000 to remigrate by the Swedish government, polling shows that very few migrants would accept the offer.

As Remix News previously reported, the Swedish government is making a significant monetary offer of 350,000 Swedish kroner to foreigners living in Sweden to voluntarily return home. It is also important to note that this amount would be paid out per person, which means a family of four could receive €124,000.

Still, these foreigners are so desperate to live in Sweden, a majority White country, that the vast majority of them said they would reject the offer, according to a poll conducted by the website Alkompis.

The poll showed that 77 percent of those questioned in the survey said that they were not even interested in the increased amount, and only 15 percent said that they would be interested in the offer. The others are uncertain.

However, of those 15 percent who said they were interested in the offer, it is possible that very few of them would actually go ahead and accept the offer. Despite these low numbers, even a small percentage of foreigners accepting the offer could result in tens of thousands of people remigrating.

The poll also revealed that 90 percent of the more than 2,700 respondents had already heard about the increased repatriation subsidy.

The poll also asked the respondents if they would be open to accepting an even higher amount, and it is important to note a strong majority said they would never accept any offer. Theoretically, even if they were offered millions of euros to return to their homelands, they would still not take the offer.

The poll showed that among the 77 percent who said no to the €31,000, they were also asked whether they would accept a higher amount. Sixty-six percent of them answered that they would never return to their country, while 25 percent would consider going home for more money.

Twenty-three percent of the respondents would consider returning for an amount of 1 million Swedish kronor, which is the equivalent of €88,000.

In many of the countries these immigrants are from, such a sum is an incredible fortune. For instance, in Afghanistan, the average annual salary is €1,000.

However, Swedish benefits for migrants and illegal migrants are also extremely generous, and unlike Middle Eastern and African countries, Sweden features efficient and highly organized hospitals, sanitation systems, schools and universities, and modern infrastructure.

To get something done or even move freely, nobody needs to bribe officials or police officers. In some of the countries these migrants are from, there is no guarantee that the money they receive from the Swedish government would even be secure.

Under the current plan, the offer will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026, with tens of millions of euros already slated in the budget for the remigration effort.

In order to ensure that the recipients of repatriation support do not travel to Sweden again with a different identity, which has happened with many who have been deported, emigrants will have to record biometric data.

Read more here…

Authored by Mark Adamczyk via American Greatness,

By now, it is pretty widely known that government agencies are still withholding thousands of “protected” files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As of 2023, 4,684 assassination records are still “fully or partially” withheld from the public.

All remaining JFK assassination records were supposed to be released in full by 2017. That is the law created by Congress in the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act (JFK Act).

What happened instead?

President Trump ordered a delay of more than 3 years.

Biden took over the task of declassifying the JFK records and actually made things worse.

Biden placed discretion back in the hands of the very agencies that fight so hard to keep these historical records locked away forever.

Both presidents did not comply with the clear language and intent of the JFK Act.

What is the reason for this?

Our government told us through the Warren Commission that only one individual (Lee Harvey Oswald) killed JFK. A “lone gunman” who had no co-conspirators. We were given that story over 60 years ago, and it was (and is still) sold brilliantly by the mainstream media and in school history books. Interestingly, the JFK Act says that an assassination record can only be withheld if it poses an identifiable harm to a living person, a current military operation, a current intelligence operation, law enforcement, or U.S. foreign relations. So, where’s the connection between the “lone nut” Oswald and a legitimate reason to withhold an assassination record in 2024?

What can stop this ongoing cover-up?

A big step forward was taken in 1992 by Congress with the JFK Act. That law created the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB). The ARRB was empowered to declassify all JFK assassination records. And that was in 1992, almost 30 years after the assassination! The ARRB declassified several million assassination records. However, the ARRB had a limited shelf life and closed down in 1998. From 1998 to 2017, Congress did nothing to ensure that the ARRB’s purpose was carried out in full. Every president since Clinton ignored the issue. Trump and Biden simply kicked the can down the road when the JFK Act required full and final disclosure in 2017.

In 2013, ARRB chairman Judge John R. Tunheim expressed his frustration with the CIA. To the Boston Globe, Tunheim said, “There is a body of documents that the CIA is still protecting, which should be released. Relying on inaccurate representations made by the CIA in the mid-1990s, the Review Board decided that records related to a deceased CIA agent named George Joannides were not relevant to the assassination. Subsequent work by researchers, using other records that were released by the board, demonstrates that these records should be made public.”

Tunheim pointed out that the CIA had not told the Warren Commission that George Joannides was the CIA lead for the agency’s links with the anti-Castro group Oswald had a public fight with in mid-1963 (in New Orleans); nor had they told the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), of which Joannides was the CIA’s liaison. Tunheim said in a separate interview that “it really was an example of treachery… If [the CIA] fooled us on that, they may have fooled us on other things.”

Tunheim’s comments shed credible light on the reason(s) for the continued secrecy. We know that Trump, when president, announced his intent to release all of the JFK records.

We know that Trump got a visit from the CIA at the eleventh hour and instead authorized a delay of more than three years.

We know that Trump has privately told a friend and advisor that he simply “could not” release the remaining JFK records because of what he was shown and told by one or more intelligence agencies.

Could it be that certain intelligence agencies are still protecting an operation involving Oswald that was not explained (or even investigated) by the Warren Commission?

What can we expect now?

Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has recently initiated legislation to finish the declassification work required by the JFK Act.

If Cohen’s bill is successful, declassification authority would be turned over to an independent civilian review board—in other words, the ARRB 2.0. This should have been done years ago by congressional oversight committees, but it’s a start. Trump has stated (again) that he will release all JFK records if re-elected, and Trump is of course supported by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in that effort. We do not know what Kamala Harris will do if elected. But at the end of the day, Congress already has the authority in the JFK Act to do this work. The next president simply has to follow the law and only authorize continued postponement for a legitimate reason.

And in all honesty, what reason could there still be for secrecy other than intelligence agencies fighting to cover up their extreme anti-Castro and anti-communist activities from the early 1960s?

Readers should look up “Operation Northwoods,” a Pentagon-CIA “false flag” scheme exposed in 1997, which can be viewed as a blueprint for the attack on JFK in Dallas. Oswald’s journey from New Orleans to Mexico City to Dallas, being portrayed as a “pro-Castro Communist sympathizer” along the way, certainly seems consistent with a Northwoods operation.

Each day it becomes increasingly clearer that the migrant crime the left side of the aisle wants us to believe is a figment of our imagination…isn’t.

The latest example came from, of all places, Nantucket, where 28 year old illegal migrant Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo was accused of raping a pre-teen child this past July after entering the U.S. from El Salvador. 

Of course, after being charged with one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, he was allowed to “walk free on bail” and immigration authorities were never called, according to a report from the New York Post.

ICE was only able to arrest him on September 10th after tracking him down, the report says. 

“He represents a significant danger to the children of our Massachusetts communities. ERO [ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations] Boston will not tolerate such a threat to the most vulnerable of our population,” said ICE Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons.

“We will continue to prioritize the safety of our public by arresting and removing egregious noncitizen offenders from our New England neighborhoods.”

The Post report says the number of migrants evading capture at the border, known as “gotaways,” has surged under the Biden-Harris administration. Over 1.7 million are known to have entered, with likely more crossing undetected.

Nantucket, like much of Massachusetts, doesn’t formally declare itself a “sanctuary,” but local officials typically don’t report migrants accused of crimes to immigration authorities.

Recently, several migrants accused of sexual violence have been released into the community. In Martha’s Vineyard, Brazilian national Warley Neto was arrested by ICE only after being indicted on multiple rape charges involving a minor.

Another case involved Jorge Luis Castro-Alvarado, a Guatemalan national, who was released on bail without ICE’s knowledge after facing rape charges. Additionally, Haitian national Cory Alvarez was arrested by ICE after being released on bail for allegedly raping a 15-year-old, the report concludes.

Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

Policy positions are historically key to making the case for one’s presidential campaign, and up until just recently, the Kamala Harris campaign avoided such conversation. Now the Harris-Walz campaign has released a snapshot of how they intend to govern, and we can’t help but notice a lot of lofty promises and empty socialist platitudes with very little detail as to how it will get done. And more importantly, why this “New Way Forward” is now needed after the Democrats’ last four years in the White House. Was that the “Wrong Way Forward?”

Average voters will notice this, so the campaign must now really control access to the candidates to keep them from having to answer tough questions. With less than sixty days remaining in the 2024 election cycle, we expect the Harris-Walz campaign to continue evading unscripted interviews while putting campaign ads in front of the media to try to make sense of that, which is clearly nonsense.

Is this a brilliant strategy, as has been stated by some media outlets? Or is this the latest in a series of strategic missteps put forth by the Democrat Party that would somehow gaslight the public into believing that the economic and societal disaster caused by the Biden-Harris administration simply did not happen?

We actually think the “basement strategy” is smart because the Democrat machine cannot change course at this point. The machine that installed Harris-Walz as the presidential ticket is too invested in its socialist agenda and is hopelessly estranged from the American public to even consider a course correction toward the center. The lying must continue to sell a vision for America that very few people want.

We saw this over four days of the Democrat National Convention.

It was an in-your-face personality disorder freak show put on by a debased group of guilt-ridden people who must lie about everything to obliterate the memory of the catastrophic Biden-Harris term in power. Democrats know that they are on the wrong side of this cycle’s three main issues: the economy, the migrant crisis on the southern border, and the feckless Biden-Harris foreign policy that has led to ongoing disasters in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Now throw in Americans’ realization that the Biden-Harris withdrawal from Afghanistan (which we were reminded of when Democrats like President Biden politicized Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery last week at the invitation of the fallen 13 who died at Abbey Gate while having done far worse himself) was a deadly catastrophic disaster with long-term geopolitical consequences.

Joe Biden—against the advice of his own joint chiefs of staff, NATO allies, and the Afghan government—pulled out so he, rather than President Trump, could claim to have ended America’s longest war. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was always about Biden’s so-called “legacy.” Democrats, Biden, and Kamala Harris, the last person in the Situation Room with the president, now own this debacle. This is now Biden’s legacy of failure. It was even more shameful than the final exit of US forces from Saigon in April 1975.

Democrats, no matter how hard they try, can’t counter this. Neither abortion (which Trump has partially defused as a wedge issue in some of the crucial swing states) nor the New Green Deal (that a majority of Americans oppose) can counter this in any meaningful way except with suburban wine moms and the TDS sufferers who watch The View.

The machine must now aim its might to prop up Vice President Harris. This is the same person who covered up Biden’s infirmity for most of his four-year term, who accomplished nothing except enable inflation-busting spending bills with her tie-breaking votes in the deadlocked 50-50 Senate, and who will continue to be abetted by a traitorous legacy news media.

All in the name of “saving our democracy.” This is as fake of a war cry as we have ever heard.

The Democrats’ “democracy” is actually a vast spoils system, an immense political machine siphoning trillions of taxpayer dollars out of the treasury and funneling those dollars to preferred non-profit organizations and NGOs, forming an unaccountable secondary bureaucracy that is at war with everyone outside of the establishment and the Deep State operatives who right now are serving as a shadow government.

All of the platitudes of improving “quality of life,” making “groceries more affordable,” achieving “border security,” and “providing for our children’s future” are cynical reminders of just how much lying is required to keep up the fiction of Democrats wanting anything other than complete intervention and control over the population. It is totalitarian in nature and explains how the left needs to feed a constant stream of lies to the public in order to sustain any degree of credibility.

But maybe Democrats don’t care about credibility. After all, the Democrat Party is the party of big government. It is a formidable enemy as it holds the levers of federal power while continuously consolidating state and local power through buying the elections of left-leaning prosecutors (Kamala Harris was one of them) that release chaos onto the public and punish those that are not on board with their agenda. They enable the racketeering operations in place to funnel vast amounts of taxpayer wealth to chosen special interest groups and activist organizations to act as proxies for government agencies to carry out their intentions under a cloak of invisibility.

“Saving our democracy” is a Democrat euphemism for “keeping our unaccountable wealth transfer juggernaut going.”

The vast amount of wealth that has been transferred from the middle class and the wealthy to the 1% elites over the last four years is simply staggering. It has nothing to do with the representation of American citizens’ interests. Any mention of benefit to American citizens is a straight-up lie.

This is what Donald Trump and the Conservative movement oppose.

It is why Democrats are actively trying to bankrupt Trump and send him to prison.

It is why Trump was targeted for assassination—the first attempt on a president’s life since 1980.

And it is why the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was sabotaged by the Democrat Party.

Kennedy has not been shy about his disdain of public health agencies and their financial relationships with Big Pharma, which are a plain conflict of interest, or his criticisms of insurance-driven asset stripping of the medical industry.

The public wealth transfer between government and private organizations (including legacy media, which frequently runs four-page ads and two-minute Big Pharma commercials in exchange for the favorable cover-up of the human wreckage caused by their products) is hidden but not invisible.

Democrats have held the presidency for 12 of the last 16 years. The party’s legacy during that period is lawfare, crime, destruction of institutions, a ruined economy, a devalued dollar, sexual lunacy, devastation of communities, and an increased possibility of a world war.

“Saving our democracy” does not mean what you think it means—it is an empty platitude that is repeated over and over to distract you from their real intention, which is to continue to seize taxpayer wealth without accountability. And pretty soon they won’t even try to hide that.

That is why the consequences of the 2024 election are enormous. As we have stated earlier, not only do Republicans need to win in November, they need to win big. It must include a popular vote victory, not just an Electoral College squeaker. Trump needs to win. Republicans must expand their tiny majority in the House and take back control of the Senate. TDS-suffering Democrats like Jamie Raskin must not be given any opportunity to contest the results of the upcoming election. Their defeat needs to be decisive and resounding.

In recent years, particularly around mid-July (the peak of the Northern Hemisphere summer), there has been a noticeable surge in headlines featuring the “hottest day” ever on record in corporate media outlets – which is of course pushed by climate alarmist journalists citing questionable studies. This timing coincides with hot weather, so naturally, it’s quite convincing to persuade readers that the world’s oceans are boiling and planet Earth will ignite into a fireball unless drastic actions are taken – such as more climate taxes, ‘carbon credits,’ banning cow farts, prohibiting new petrol-powered vehicle sales by X date, and pushing spending bills to procure more solar panels from China, to save the planet.

The problem is that corporate media only focuses on recent history – and not “in context” (as they love to say). Context is particularly important when it comes to climate change – as their narrative collapses when looking at a long enough timeline.

To wit… a funny thing happened when the Washington Post tried to map out half a billion years of global temperatures and the “disaster of global warming” … 

A funny thing happened as the WaPo tried to map out half a billion years of global temperatures and the “disaster of global warming” pic.twitter.com/HA6yxpf9V7

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 20, 2024

WaPo journalists cited a new study about Earth’s global surface temperatures over the last 485 million years. In 2023, Earth’s average temperature reached 58.96 F (14.98 C), well below the average 96.8 degrees F (36 degrees Celsius) the study showed around 100 million years ago. The trend shows Earth’s temperatures have been sliding for 50 million years. 

Of course, all they can focus on is the most recent blip (supported, as astute readers know, by faulty data).

[A] growing chorus of climate scientists are saying the temperature readings are faulty and that the trillions of dollars pouring in are based on a problem that doesn’t exist.

More than 90 percent of NOAA’s temperature monitoring stations have a heat bias, according to Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute, author of climate website Watts Up With That, and director of a study that examined NOAA’s climate stations.

“And with that large of a number, over 90 percent, the methods that NOAA employs to try to reduce this don’t work because the bias is so overwhelming,” Mr. Watts told The Epoch Times.

“The few stations that are left that are not biased because they are, for example, outside of town in a field and are an agricultural research station that’s been around for 100 years … their data gets completely swamped by the much larger set of biased data. There’s no way you can adjust that out.” -Epoch Times

Maybe, just maybe, the level of human-caused global warming doom porn pushed by the government, corporate media outlets, global NGOs, and far-left billionaires is not as apocalyptic as they make it sound.

Which of course means (and as we knew), all those idiot kids running around the West, throwing paint on private jets and artwork, and gluing their hands to highways, are doing it for nothing – and are indeed in a cult.

The climate scam isn’t complex. We are always 7-10 years away from climate catastrophe. 😂

It will never get any better or any worse, just always on the edge of Armageddon.🤪 pic.twitter.com/zq9mcTCHbB

— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 10, 2024

Jordan Peterson: Climate science is “an appalling scam”.

“We’re essentially in a CO2 drought by historical standards… We were almost at the point where the plants were going to start to die.”

“Now they have been increasing… The major consequences is that the planet is 20%… pic.twitter.com/2j5lDDRXIy

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 29, 2024

Climate grift. 

Oh, by the way, here’s another truth bomb for the woke left. 

Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University, Dr. William Happer:

“CO2 is actually good for the world, so people ought to be encouraged to make more of it.”

According to Dr. Happer, carbon taxes are being promoted by “opportunists who are making a good living out of… pic.twitter.com/cM2hLA46MJ

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) September 19, 2024

Rep. Thomas Massie: “I think the whole carbon thing is a scam…I wish we had more carbon, we need more CO2 and in periods in Earth’s history we had more CO2 and plant life was doing better and we’ve seen the coverage of green on the globe increase as CO2 levels go up, crop… pic.twitter.com/0Qhh2USGPw

— Camus (@newstart_2024) June 9, 2024

And then there’s this. 

Marc Morano: “The same template. Climate changers make a scary prediction, say the only way we can avoid this dire end of world scenario is to go full Marxist and we have to do it and no dissent is allowed and we have to go forward, we need planned recessions, we need to reduce… pic.twitter.com/gjqExGpp8w

— Camus (@newstart_2024) July 8, 2024

Here’s what X users are saying about WaPo’s reporting…

This is why climate alarmists always alarm me more than climate itself.

There is too much money to be gained by grifters causing people to panic about an uncontrollable subject such as the weather.

The panic prevents reasonable conversations about sustainability.

— Craig Chamberlin (@CraigChamberlin) September 20, 2024

Climate change is about global governance, nothing more. Globalists use the media to create climate change hysteria in their effort to build transnational institutions that have the power to regulate and tax internationally above the power of nation states.

— Brian O’Brien (@BrianOBrien13) September 20, 2024

And then they still proceeded with their propaganda.

Corporate media only exists to be mocked at this point.

— Axiomatic Enemy of the State (@DeTocqueville14) September 20, 2024

Now map Carbon Dioxide onto that . We are at historic LOWS ! Every geologist knows that this is a scam

— Gareth – Art of Satoshi (@gareth_eckley) September 20, 2024

By Tsvetana Paraskova of Oilprice

Over the past weeks, Russia has been using a growing number of oil tankers sanctioned by the West to export its oil, in a move suggesting that Moscow has become more successful in defying U.S. and EU restrictions.

A total of six oil tankers sanctioned by the U.S., the EU, or the UK loaded oil cargoes from Russia in August, and at least another six have done the same so far in September, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

The data showed that at least 17 sanctioned tankers have left Russian ports loaded with oil since the end of April. The trend now appears to be accelerating, with mostly tankers owned by Russian state tanker fleet operator Sovcomflot loading cargoes.

At the end of last year, the U.S. started to ramp up sanctions on entities carrying Russian oil, aiming to stifle Putin’s revenues and address the violations of the price cap mechanism under which Russian oil can be transported on Western-owned, insured, or financed tankers only if the price is crude is $60 per barrel or below.

In February 2024, the U.S. Treasury and State targeted Sovcomflot and more than a dozen tankers linked to the Russian state-owned fleet operator.

The EU has also designated vessels of the so-called ‘dark fleet’ that Russia has amassed. The UK has explicitly targeted vessels in Putin’s shadow fleet, used by Russia to circumvent UK and G7 sanctions, in its first sanctions directly aimed at the dark fleet, which is estimated to have grown to more than 600 tankers known to have shipped sanctioned oil at least once.

In response to Bloomberg’s queries, Sovcomflot, also known as SCF, has said that since it doesn’t have connections to Western countries, it cannot be viewed as a subject to these sanctions.

“Hence, SCF cannot be regarded as an ‘offender’ nor as a tool to undermine sanctions,” Sovcomflot told Bloomberg.