US eases Russian oil sanctions

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people, so when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over one billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn ads generate the highest B2B return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a podcast from Nerd Wallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right credit cards and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach. Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form.

1:02Nerd Wallet's travel journalist sought out what's worth paying for, from lounge access to travel advisors to hotel loyalty programs. Make your travel dollars work harder. Follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app. The United States is allowing the sale of some Russian oil to train rain in global energy prices. It's world business express from the BBC World Service. I'm Sarah Rogers. We'll also hear from a captain of a ship stuck in the Strait of Hormuz and away from that conflict, what a AI powered toys teaching toddlers. Hello, yes, US President Trump has loosened sanctions on countries buying Russian oil to try and keep a lid on rising energy prices. The European Union says it's deeply concerned here's Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

2:02Once again, we believe this is the wrong decision. There is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem. And in that regard, I would like to know what additional motives led the US government to make this decision. Well, let's find out a bit more about that with the BBC's Nick Marsh. Let's assign that the US is concerned about the rising price of oil. It's currently at around $100 a barrel. So this is an issue because the higher the price of oil is, then the higher the price of everything is. Therefore, ordinary Americans people all around the world suddenly face a higher cost of living. So saying to countries, yes, you can buy sanctioned Russian oil for 30 days. It's oil that specifically stranded at sea. Have all these Russian tankers. Saying to countries, yeah, you can do this. Is an attempt to try and increase the supply and to try and ease fears among oil traders. We actually saw last week the US issue a waiver to India specifically. They made an agreement with India. And India said it would stop buying Russian oil. The US kind of went back on that and said, no, you can carry on. Now, this is all coming about because the US Israel war with Iran has all but closed the strait of Hormuz

3:05the rich around a fifth of the world's oil and seaborne gas tankers pass. That pushed prices of Brent crude, which is a benchmark for oil up past $100 a barrel this week. So now as Nick said there, Russian oil in transit, which has been subject to sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine, can now be sold. But how much oil is there and where is it? I asked Nick Coleman from the investment advisory firm Prism Strategic Intelligence. There was an estimated 30 million barrels of oil sitting in oil tankers off the coast of India at the end of February. Your average large oil tanker might hold a million barrels of oil or a bit less than that. So you'd be thinking about 30, 40 tankers of Russian oil hesitating about unloading because the Trump administration has imposed lots of tariffs and measures to discourage this trade. But now that seems to have been lifted. A lot of that oil will go into India now, I think, and other destinations around the world.

4:07So Russia has said that it's got about 100 million barrels of oil. Can you put that into context for us? How much is that globally? How long would that last? So globally, if that was all of the oil that was available to the world, that would last for one day. They've announced this measure just for one month, right, until April 11th. And then everything's supposed to go back to where it did before. But really, if the conflict in the Middle East goes on longer, then they could just extend these easing measures, easing sanctions on Russia. And so Russia's been pushing up the price because it's now in demand. How much is Russia going to benefit from this? Russia was suffering from severe kind of discounting of its oil until now. So oil was selling at prices way below normal sort of global Brent prices, if you like. And now those discounts have been closing up and Russia's getting much better price. And do you think this just opens the door on Russian oil in the long term? It's a step in that direction.

5:09I think Ukraine, for one, will be trying to maintain the pressure militarily on Russia. And they can do a lot of damage. We saw quite a big attack on an oil terminal in Novo-de-Sis, which caused about a week of shutdown of exports from that port. That was Nick Coleman from Prism Strategic Intelligence. With me, I have Randi Epsomel, the fund manager at MNG Investments. Earlier US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said this was aimed at promoting stability in global energy markets. Randi P, is it? What we really need now is that it's to be open again. And so how are we compared to last week in terms of the markets?

6:09Are they bracing for a longer more sustained impact now? They are. I mean, 20% of global seaborn oils comes from the state of her moves and countries like not just Iran, but Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It needs to be open in order for that free, free flowing oil to get back onto the market without it. We are likely to see the oil price continue to rise. Okay, thank you, Randi Epsomel, from MNG Investments. Now, a bit other around two weeks ago, you might not have been aware of the straight of homies or how important it is. Now we can hear from there the BBC has made contact with a South Korean ship unable to sail through the strait. The words of Captain Choi Woon have been voiced by one of our reporters. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is now blocking the straits. We're unable to sail and are now waiting while en route to Dubai. At the moment, we have enough food and water for about 38 days, but if this situation continues, we'll need to be resupplied. There's a saying that when whales fight, it's the shrimp that gets hurt.

7:13And in this case, it's the powerless seafarers who've lost their way. Seafarers are meant to work hard, yet now they have nowhere to go. So what I want to say is we must love one another. We should not hate. That's the message I want to leave. Well, that message there from Captain Choi Woon. But there are reports of ships going through the strait despite threats of being attacked. The UN's International Maritime Organization will hold an emergency meeting next week at its London headquarters. Its boss, or Sanio Dominguez, had this warning for ship owners. The area is just too risky. I call on all ship owners and ship operators actually not to sail to the region if necessary. One of the challenges right now is to identify the vessels. The reason is for it, some of them are turning off their satellite navigation systems, in order not to be detected. So the time that we get the information of where they are, they have already sailed through. Then, of course, some of them are hiding their identity in order, again, to seek protection. So right now, what we're working on is in particularly the main ship owners,

8:14ship operator agencies, the represents the sector in order to highlight the importance of following guidance that we have put in place in order to safeguard the vessels as much as possible during these high risk situations. And then, avoid the transit at all costs. As well, people in Moscow and other major Russian cities are reportedly going analogue to stay connected, following internet disruption there. Media reports using data from wild berries, which is a large online retailer, says sales of walkie-talkies rose 27%, pages 73%, and paper maps of Moscow nearly tripled at the start of March. The Kremlin says that restrictions on mobile communications were for safety reasons due to Ukrainian attacks. Now, we talk a lot about AI on world business express and what it might hold for the future. Well, today, scientists at Cambridge University in Britain have called for tighter regulations on toys powered by artificial intelligence. Researchers have conducted one of the world's first tests on how children,

9:18under five, interact with the tech, using a cuddly chat, what? Called Gabbo. Hi there. How are you today? We good. What's something you love to see? A unicorn. Unicorns are magical preachers. If you could imagine riding on a unicorn, where would you go? A unicorn, that's okay. They found that children struggled to chat with it because it talked over them as three-year-old Maya who took part in the small trial found out just there. The concern is that when children are learning about social interaction and cues, generative AI could be confusing and you can read that full story online from our technology editor, Zoe Kleinman at bbc.com. Okay, but that's it from world business express with me, Sarah Rogers. Do subscribe though to get the latest search for world business express. The best b2b marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads.

10:21LinkedIn has grown to a network of over one billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest b2b return on ad spend of major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. That's LinkedIn.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.