Deputy Treasury Sec’y: ‘Russia Will Still Have the Ability to Sell Their Oil’ Because We Want to Keep Energy Prices Down

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that “Russia will still have the ability to sell their oil” under the newest round of sanctions by the Biden administration and that they haven’t banned Russian oil to avoid energy cost increases.

While discussing sanctions on Russian shipping, Adeyemo stated, “Russia will still have the ability to sell their oil. They’ll just make less money doing it going forward.”

Host Katy Tur then asked, “What about banning Russian oil? I know we have a price cap on it now. Have you — has the administration considered putting an outright ban on Russian oil?”

Adeyemo responded, “So, the reason we put a price cap on Russian oil was because we wanted to make sure that we did two things: reduce Russia’s revenues, but make sure that we don’t increase the cost of energy for the rest of the world, and we succeeded in doing that to date. Russia’s revenues from energy for the federal government [are] down 40% in 2023, and we’ve seen energy prices in the rest of the world come down. Our goal is to make that even starker for Russia, and that’s why we’re taking the actions going after their largest shipping company.”

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