US, Allies Discuss Capping Russian Oil Russian President Vladimir Putin has found another weapon to use against European countries supporting Ukraine — Kazakhstan’s crude — and it will cost him almost nothing, writes Bloomberg oil strategist Julian Lee. While a grace period ticks down before European sanctions on Russian oil kick in on Dec. 5 and the G7 group of industrialized countries considers a price cap on Moscow’s crude exports, Putin is getting his retaliation in early. A court in the town of Novorossiysk has ordered the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to halt shipments from its Black Sea export terminal for a month as punishment for violating oil spill regulations. The beauty of the move, from a Russian perspective, is that the flow that will be curtailed is not primarily Russian crude, which can be diverted elsewhere anyway, but output from neighboring Kazakhstan. Almost 1.5 million barrels a day of […]