Biden to Tap U.S. Oil Reserves as War Enters 6th Week

 

Biden to Tap U.S. Oil Reserves as War Enters 6th Week

 

The price of oil, which has been surging since the war began, dropped. With shelling around Kyiv continuing, the U.S. and its allies remained skeptical of Moscow’s pledge to scale back its offensive.

 

Megan Specia and Andrea Kannapell

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/31/world/ukraine-russia-war-news

 

Here are the latest developments.

• With the war in Ukraine and the network of sanctions against Russia’s energy industry disrupting global fuel supplies, President Biden will announce on Thursday a plan to release up to 180 million barrels of oil from U.S. strategic reserves. Oil prices, which had been surging since the fighting in Ukraine began, had already fallen modestly on expectations of the announcement.
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• At the same time, OPEC and its allies, including Russia, decided on Thursday to stick with their previously agreed upon plan of modest monthly production increases.
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• The war’s ripple effects are continuing to spread. Diesel prices are soaring, the number of Ukrainian refugees has surpassed four million — half of them children — and the United Nations is forecasting the worst global hunger crisis in decades as the conflict constrains Ukrainian and Russian grain exports. Ukraine said on Thursday that it had missed $1.5 billion in such exports since the war began.
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• As the economic consequences of the war played out, the fighting on the ground stretched into its sixth week. A Russian attack on Wednesday night destroyed an oil terminal in Dnipro, a local official said. The central city has become a hub for humanitarian aid to other parts of Ukraine.
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• The Kyiv region’s daily report noted fighting at the same level in city’s suburbs on Thursday as had occurred on Wednesday, and also reported shelling on dozens of communities and an oil depot. The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that the alliance saw little evidence that Russia was fulfilling its pledge to withdraw from the area, and that the troops were instead repositioning.
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Here are some other major developments:

•  The director of Britain’s electronic surveillance agency, Jeremy Fleming, said that Russian forces were struggling not only with low morale and weapons shortages, but they had also accidentally shot down their own aircraft and had refused to carry out orders.
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• The United States leveled new sanctions on Russian technology companies, targeting the supply chains of Russia’s military industrial sector and the networks Moscow uses to evade existing sanctions.
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• Ukrainian and Russian officials have signaled a willingness to keep negotiating. A member of Ukraine’s negotiating team said that discussions between the two sides would resume via video link on Friday, and the foreign minister of Turkey, which hosted talks this week, said that his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts could meet within weeks.
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• The International Committee of the Red Cross said that a humanitarian corridor to allow residents to escape Mariupol could open on Friday, after an announcement by Russia’s Defense Ministry that a cease-fire in the besieged southern city would start on Thursday. Previous cease-fires have collapsed in the city, where thousands of residents are stuck with little access to food, water or electricity.
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• The Kremlin dismissed U.S. claims of intelligence suggesting that Mr. Putin’s aides have given him overly optimistic battlefield reports, describing it as a “complete misunderstanding.”