Yellen: We will prevent evasion of Russian oil price cap

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she was preparing to block any evasion of the G7’s price cap on Russian oil because recent market prices suggested the mechanism may no longer work as hoped. “The United States is looking very carefully at the implementation and we want to make sure that market participants know that we take this price cap seriously and that we are serious about respecting the cap to the extent that Western services are used,” Yellen told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. The cap and its enforcement are expected to be on the agenda of G-7 finance ministers at the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Marrakesh, Morocco this week. The cap is one of a broader set of financial penalties imposed on Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies imposed the price cap in late 2022 in an effort to keep exports high to prevent world oil prices from spiking while also undermining the war effort and denying Moscow some of its revenue from fuel sales.