Research Commentary: Understanding the Price Cap on Russian Oil and Its Role in Depressing Russian Oil Revenues

Catherine Wolfram

August 2024

The price cap on Russian oil is a novel approach to sanctions, and, like other new, complex policy tools, it has been occasionally misinterpreted. I address some of the main misunderstandings I have seen, focusing on a recent Dallas Fed working paper by Killian, Rapson and Schipper, which assesses the impacts of various policies aimed at reducing Russia’s oil revenues after its invasion of Ukraine, including the price cap.

The price cap is designed to keep Russian oil on the market while limiting the Kremlin’s oil revenues. The price cap applies to seaborne shipments of Russian crude oil and refined petroleum products that use services, including shipping, insurance, trade finance, flagging, and bunkering, from companies based in price cap coalition countries (sometimes called “Western services”). The cap has been $60 per barrel for crude oil, with different caps for various types of petroleum products.

The Killian, Rapson and Schipper paper hypothesizes that the price cap was nonbinding and ineffectual. At the same time, Russian oil has sold at a considerable discount to global benchmark prices since the war began, so the paper needs an explanation for why that discount has persisted that doesn’t rely on the price cap sanctions. It argues that all reductions in Russia’s revenues are due to the EU embargo on Russian oil as that policy offered China and India increased bargaining power and forced tankers to travel further. I don’t agree with that conclusion, which relies on incorrect analysis that I describe in this commentary.