Tell Gas Retailers - and Biden - to Ban Russian Oil

Shell and other energy companies continue to purchase Russian oil. Its time for consumers to stop subsidizing Putin's criminal war machine

While Royal Dutch Shell’s purchase of deeply discounted Russian Ural oil this week is most likely headed to Europe, I now can eliminate one source of retail gasoline for my vehicles. Shell is the most significant controller of retail gasoline sales in the U.S. - some 13% of our nation’s 105,000 retail outlets. B.P. and Valero are also in the top ten.

But they’re hardly alone. From Bloomberg:

European oil major Shell Plc is one company that has bucked the trend, continuing to purchase Russian oil, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company operates one refinery in the U.S., in Louisiana. 

Marathon Petroleum Corp., the biggest U.S. buyer of Russian crude, declined to comment on whether it would halt purchases. The other top buyers -- Valero Energy Corp., PBF Energy and Motiva Enterprises LLC didn’t respond to requests for comment. Phillips 66, which purchased 3.8 million barrels of Russian oil last year, declined to comment while Chevron Corp., which imported about 4 million barrels to its California refineries in 2021, said it was “monitoring developments.”

However, to its credit, Shell is exiting (eventually) equity partnerships with Russia’s state-controlled energy company, Gazprom. So is British Petroleum (B.P.) is giving up its roughly 20 percent ownership share in Russian gas company Rosneft. So there’s that. But Shell and other companies continue to buy Russian oil, thus helping subsidize Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine.

Shell, Marathon, Phillips 66, Chevron, and perhaps other retailers should be avoided for the immediate future unless you’re on Team Putin, at least until they can assure us that purchases of their fuel aren’t subsidizing Putin’s criminal war machine.

The retail gasoline market is complicated (refiners buy their oil from multiple domestic and international sources and often sell to various retail outlets), but there’s no harm in asking your gas retailer where their oil originates. Perhaps retailers should consider certifying and marketing their fuel as “Russian-free.” After all, governments have forced “country of origin labeling” requirements on food and cars in recent years. Why not retail fuel?

High oil and gas prices - and purchases like this - fund Putin’s evil cluster bombs and violence on innocent civilians, including women and children, in Ukraine. This could be fixed quickly by the Biden Administration, but read on.

Shell cannot ship this oil to Canada, which admittedly hasn’t accepted any Russian oil for three years but banned Russian oil imports anyway. Unlike the Biden Administration (and many European nations), they have sanctioned Russian oil and gas.

Biden refuses to for a couple of reasons. First, he continues to allow Russia to mediate a very ill-advised renegotiation in Geneva of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. That’s right - while scores of companies, even Nike, are pulling out of the Russian market, Biden remains addicted to Russian oil. “Russia producers nearly tripled shipments of oil to the United States in 2021 – in 2020, the United States imported from Russia on average 76,000 barrels per day (bpd), while in 2021, that figure rose to 209,000 bpd, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy,” according to the website globalenergyprize.org.

Russian oil is being offloaded in Honolulu, Delaware Bay (close to Joe Biden’s beachfront home), and Houston, Texas.

Second, Biden and his team, which has already helped foist upon us a 58 percent increase in retail gasoline prices over the past 14 months, seems suddenly worried about the political impact of even higher prices by keeping Putin’s dirty oil out of the U.S. Worried about triggering a recession, perhaps? Should have thought about that earlier.

America became energy independent in 2020. “I fixed that,” Biden might say.

It embarrasses me to say that Justin Trudeau seems tougher on Russia than Joe Biden or his compatriots in Europe. Imagine that. Mon Dieu.

Memo to Joe Biden. I’m willing to pay more at the pump to avoid subsidizing Putin’s regime, even though one oil analyst, Matt Smith, says price impacts from a Russian oil ban would be limited. “A ban on Russian crude and product imports would have a limited impact on prices, given flows of Russian energy to the U.S. are small in terms of total deliveries and alternative sources could be found,” Smith said. “A number of the current imports are opportunistic purchases, rather than regular deliveries.”

Most Americans are on board with a ban on Russian oil. Even Nancy Pelosi.