American senators Democrat Maggie Hassan and Republican Marco Rubio called on the US Department of Defense to explain what it is doing to exclude Russian oil from its supply chain. This was reported by The Washington Post.
Lawmakers instrumental in efforts to strengthen oil sanctions enforcement have demanded that the defense secretary Lloyd Austin answer several written questions and conduct a briefing, the publication notes.
“Russian organizations use loopholes and workarounds to not only bring gas and oil to market, but in some cases secretly sell fuel to the Ministry of Defense,” — the senators wrote, citing materials published in The Washington Post and the Project on Government Oversight.
The Post writes that journalists tracked the shipment of banned petroleum products from Russian Black Sea ports to Motor Oil Hellas, a Pentagon supplier in Greece. According to her, the cargo was sent through a terminal in Turkey. There, the publication was told that the terminal simply stores products, and at the Greek refinery, in turn, they were told that the fuel, according to the documents, complies with the sanctions, although a number of data indicate that large volumes of it are from Russia.
The publication was unable to determine exactly how much fuel oil of Russian origin is in the products purchased by the Pentagon; it is of good purity.
“The labyrinthine path of oil from terminals in Russia to the US fleet is almost certainly done deliberately by Russia to evade sanctions. The Department of Defense must take clear steps to ensure that it does not contribute to the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine,” the letter said.
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2023-12-04 20:59:00
