The European Union has agreed to ban all Russian oil imports which come in by sea.
Russia has been supplying about a quarter of the oil EU countries import. That is about 2.2 million barrels per day of crude oil and 1.2 million barrels of oil products.
According to the Carnegie Endowment, a US think tank, this has been earning Russia more than $1bn (£800m) a day.
The EU plans to ban Russian oil imports arriving by sea by the end of this year. This would cut EU nations’ oil imports from Russia by two-thirds.
The EU will continue to allow 800,000 bpd of oil imports brought in by pipeline, as a “temporary measure”.
That’s because countries like Hungary and Slovakia depend on it.
However, Germany and Poland – which also import Russian oil by pipeline – say they will stop doing so by the end of this year.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says that after this, Russia will only be exporting “10 or 11%” of the oil it had previously been selling to EU states.
In addition to the EU’s measures, the US has declared a complete ban on Russian oil, gas and coal imports. The UK is to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.
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