Recently, Russian Prime Minister Mishustin announced that he would sign a temporary bill on banning the export of refined oil products. According to the provisions of the law, Russia will temporarily ban the export of finished gasoline for 6 months from March 1, 2024, and raise the export sales standard of finished diesel to 16%.
This decision has attracted much attention, especially in the list of friendly countries that Russia has attached to the exemption, and China is not visible.
According to the list of exemptions provided by the Russian side, it mainly includes eight countries and economies: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia of the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as Mongolia and Uzbekistan, as well as two regions unilaterally recognized by Russia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Although China is not included in the exemption list, in practice this will not have a significant impact on our country. China has a complete refining technology, and the cost is lower than the current Russia, so we mainly import from abroad for domestic processing. The amount of pure imported refined oil products is very limited, for example, only 17 tons of processed diesel were imported from January to August 2023, so the impact can be said to be minimal.
Russia's ban is aimed at two main things. First of all, it is to stabilize the supply and demand relationship of domestic refined oil products and meet the needs of spring industrial development, agricultural planting and front-line military affairs. The second is to deal with external sanctions and work with OPEC and other oil exporting countries to regulate global oil products**, so a temporary ban has been taken.
Although the Russian ban has little impact on China, it also reminds us to be vigilant. Despite the stability of Sino-Russian relations, Russia may still make adjustments and fluctuations in its energy policy out of its own interests.
Therefore, for us, although we can continue to deepen the relationship between the two countries, we still need to adhere to the strategy of "not putting all the eggs in one basket" on the energy issue, and take precautions for our own energy security strategy. Such thinking is essential for us to maintain national energy security and stable development.