The EU is working on broadening sanctions on Russia to include oil and gas embargoes but such measures would take “several months”,European officials told AFP on Friday.
The bloc last week announced a ban on Russian coal in a first step against Russian energy exports — together, Moscow’s main hard currency earner.
But the coal sanction only kicks in from mid-August, and would hit around eight billion euros ($8.7 billion) in Russia’s sales abroad, annually.
Russian oil and gas sales to the EU account for a far higher amount of revenue: between a quarter of a billion to a billion euros per day, per different estimates.
Public and political opinion in the EU is swinging towards a total energy ban as Moscow’s war in Ukraine grinds on and yields discoveries of atrocities.
An EU official involved in discussions on cutting Russian energy imports said the European Commission is “thinking about options”. Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has already come out publicly in favour of targeting Russian oil.
But, the official said, “adopting measures on oil means undoing existing contracts, finding alternatives and preventing circumvention”.
“That can’t be don’t overnight. It requires at least several months.”
Building EU outrage over the war is sweeping aside hesitation by the member states reliant on Russian oil and gas, such as the bloc’s biggest economy Germany, and Italy, Greece and Austria.
