The West’s threat of a ban on Russian oil shakes markets

“WE ARE NOW talking to our European partners and allies to look in a co-ordinated way at the prospect of banning the import of Russian oil.” With that bombshell announcement on March 6th, Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, set global oil markets ablaze. In the hours that followed, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the American benchmark crude, shot up by more than 9%. Brent crude soared to nearly $140 a barrel, double the price on December 1st, before dropping to $123 on March 7th. There is now speculation that oil could touch $200 a barrel if the war in Ukraine gets uglier.That is the volatile backdrop to the oil industry’s most important gathering of the year. Thousands of energy executives and other grandees, including the bosses of Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil, the secretary-general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and America’s energy secretary, have come to Houston for CERAWeek, an annual conference put on by S&P Global, a financial-information firm. This week’s programme encompasses long-term issues like climate change and the energy transition but recent events ensure that geopolitics will dominate the gabfest.