US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently announced that the US and its European allies are considering a ban on Russian oil imports, which would mark a significant new escalation of sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Our two charts today look at the situation in more detail: first, by revealing Russia's most important oil export partners, and second, the resulting rise in crude oil prices.

How severely would an oil export ban affect the Russian economy? As shown in the chart, using the latest UN Comtrade data, the combined impact of the US and EU halting oil imports would be significant, despite China being by far the largest recipient of Russian oil. Even just taking into account the countries at the top of this list, as shown here, a ban would strip more than 40% of the trade value from Russia's oil exports. When calculating imports from all
EU countries and the US, this figure exceeds 48% – in 2020, the trade volume stood at 35 billion USD.
https://euobserver.com/world/154493