UK visa priority services suspended amid Ukraine crisis
Amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis, the UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI) has decided to suspend priority and super-priority visa processing services for all applications being made from outside the UK.
MAY 4: The world's major oil exporters meet on 5 May, amid calls from across the globe to bring down prices.
But members of oil producers' group Opec+ - which includes Russia - are not rushing to help out.
What is Opec+?
Opec+ is a group of 23 oil-exporting countries that meets every month in Vienna, to decide how much crude oil to put onto the world market.
At the core of this group are the 13 members of Opec (the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries), which are mainly Middle Eastern and African countries. It was formed in 1960 as a cartel, with the aim of fixing the worldwide supply of oil and its price.
Nowadays, Opec nations produce about 30% of the world's crude oil, about 28 million barrels a day. The biggest single oil producer within Opec is Saudi Arabia - which produces more than 10 million barrels a day.
In 2016, when oil prices were particularly low, Opec joined forces with 10 non-Opec oil producers to create Opec+.
Among them is Russia, which also produces over 10 million barrels a day.
Together, these nations produce about 40% of all the world's crude oil.
"Opec+ tailors supply and demand to balance the market," says Kate Dourian, of the Energy Institute. "They keep prices high by lowering supplies when the demand for oil slumps."
Opec+ could also lower prices by putting more oil onto the market, which is what major importers like the US and UK want it to do.
How did oil prices get this high?
In spring 2020, as Covid spread around the world and countries went into lockdown, the price of crude oil crashed because of a lack of buyers.
"Producers were paying people to take the oil off their hands, because they didn't have enough space to store it all," says Ms Dourian.
After this, Opec+ members agreed to slash production by 10m barrels a day, to drive the price back up.
In June 2021, with demand for crude beginning to recover, Opec+ started gradually increasing supply, putting an extra 400,000 barrels a day onto world markets. It is now supplying some two and a half million barrels of oil a day less than in spring 2020.
However, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of crude soared to well over $100 a barrel. This has caused significant rises in the price of petrol at the pumps.
"When Opec+ cut supplies by 10 million barrels a day in May 2020, they cut too deep," says David Fyfe, chief economist at Argus Media.
"Now they're increasing supply at a slow rate that does not take into account the effects of the Russia-Ukraine crisis."
There is a fear among oil buyers that the EU will follow the US and impose an embargo on oil imports from Russia, says Mr Fyfe. Europe currently imports over two and a half million barrels of crude a day from Russia.
"The threat of an embargo on Russian oil has spooked the markets," he says, "because it could lead to an acute supply squeeze."
Why won't Opec+ boost oil output?
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly appealed to Saudi Arabia to increase its oil output, but to no avail.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also asked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to increase production. He too was rebuffed.
"Saudi and the UAE have spare capacity, but they are refusing to increase output on their own," says Kate Dourian. "They don't want to be dictated to by the West.
"They are saying that the gap between supply and demand is narrowing, and that today's high prices simply reflect panic on the part of oil buyers."
Other Opec+ nations are finding it hard to increase their oil production.
"Producers like Nigeria and Angola have been undershooting their production quotas by a collective one million barrels a day over the past year," says David Fyfe.
"Investment fell off during the pandemic - and oil installations, in some cases, haven't been well maintained. Now, they're discovering they can't actually deliver production increases in full."
What is Russia's stance?
Opec+ also has to respect Russia's wishes, since it is one of the two biggest partners in the alliance.
"The Russians are happy with prices at this level," says Carole Nakhle, CEO of Crystol Energy. "They have nothing to gain in seeing them go lower.
"Opec wants to keep good relations with Russia, so they are most likely to continue with the agreement they all made last year. That means increasing crude supplies very gradually from now until September."
With inputs from BBC
APRIL 27: The Indian government has defended the move to buy Russian oil, and said what it buys from Russia in a month is less than what Europe buys from Russia in an afternoon.
Why is India buying more Russian oil?
India has taken advantage of discounted prices to ramp up oil imports from Russia at a time when global energy prices have been rising.
The US has said that although these oil imports do not violate sanctions, "support for Russia...is support for an invasion that obviously is having a devastating impact".
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss also urged India to reduce its dependence on Russia during a trip to Delhi in March, which took place at the same time as a visit by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
Mr Lavrov told his Indian counterparts that Russia was willing to discuss any goods that India wanted to buy and urged that payments be made in roubles.
Where does India get its oil?
After the US and China, India is the world's third-largest consumer of oil, over 80% of which is imported.
But in 2021, only around 2% of its total oil imports (12 million barrels of Urals crude) came from Russia, according to Kpler, a commodities research group.
By far the largest supplies last year came from oil producers in the Middle East, with significant quantities also from the US and Nigeria.
In January and February, India didn't import any oil from Russia.
But so far, the amount of Urals oil contracts made for India covering March, April, May and June - around 26 million barrels - is higher than the quantity purchased during the whole of 2021, according to Kpler.
What's the deal India is getting?
Following its invasion of Ukraine, there are now fewer buyers for Russia's Ural crude oil, with some foreign governments and companies deciding to shun Russian energy exports, and its price has fallen.
While the exact price of the sales made to India is unknown, "the discount of Urals to Brent crude [the global benchmark] remains at around $30 per barrel", says Matt Smith, an analyst at Kpler.
These two types of crude normally sell at a similar price.
At one point in March, as the price of Urals crude continued to drop, the difference between them reached an all-time record, he adds.
So "India is likely to purchase at least some of this [Russian] crude at a significant discount," he says.
What's the impact of financial sanctions?
Although the price is attractive, India's big refining companies are facing a challenge trying to finance these purchases, because of sanctions on Russian banks.
It's a problem facing trade in both directions.
One of the options India is looking at is a transaction system based on local currencies, where Indian exporters to Russia get paid in roubles instead of dollars or euros.
The US has made clear its reservations with this, saying it could "prop up the rouble or undermine the dollar-based financial system".
Where else is India looking to buy oil?
India's oil imports from the US have gone up significantly since February, according to analysts at Refinitiv.
However, market analysts say this may not be sustainable in the future as the US seeks to use its domestic oil production to replace supplies from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
There are also suggestions that trade with Iran could resume under a barter mechanism which Indian oil refiners could use to buy its oil. This arrangement stopped three years ago, when the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran.
But this is unlikely to resume without a wider deal reached in international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme.
With inputs from BBC
MARCH 14: Unnamed officials reportedly told multiple US news outlets that Russia asked China to provide military assistance after it began the invasion.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said it was not aware of this request.
The warning comes ahead of a meeting in Rome on Monday between top US and China officials.
Since the start of the crisis Beijing has expressed strong rhetorical support for long-time ally Moscow, but is not publicly known to have provided any military or economic support.
However local media outlets citing US officials, say that Russia has in recent days asked China specifically for military equipment, including drones. China's response to that request is not known.
In a CNN interview, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said they were "communicating directly, privately to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them.
"We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world."
He added that while the US believed China was aware that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was "planning something" before the invasion happened, Beijing "may not have understood the full extent of it".
"Because it's very possible that [Mr] Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others," Mr Sullivan said.
Mr Sullivan is due to meet Yang Jiechi, a member of China's top decision-making body the Politburo and the head of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, on Monday in Rome.
Reuters news agency quoted a US official as saying that during the meeting Mr Sullivan will spell out the consequences and isolation China would face if it increased support for Russia.
China so far has refrained from condemning Russia for the invasion, and has said Moscow's "legitimate security concerns" should be taken seriously.
Chinese state media and government officials, besides echoing Russia's official line that it is a "special military operation" and not an invasion, have also been repeating Russian disinformation claims about the war in recent days.
But Beijing at the same time has expressed "unwavering support" for Ukraine's sovereignty. It has also called for peace, and has said it is ready to help end the war through diplomacy. Several countries have urged China to do more to stop Russia's invasion.
The EU and US help Ukraine, China helps Russia; if that's how this goes, then it's a delineation that will make the war in Ukraine an even more consequential one.
The White House has decided to make public its claim just as President Biden's top security adviser is due to meet with China's most senior diplomat. It appears to be a tactical move, to put pressure on China; presumably to either confirm or deny it.
The bigger aim could be to try to make Xi Jinping weigh up the pros and cons to his current position of what was last week called a "rock solid" relationship with Moscow.
Remember that it was just weeks ago, as the Winter Olympics opened in Beijing, that Presidents Xi and Putin declared a new alliance that had "no limit". Military aid could, clearly, be part of that.
But in the days after Russia's invasion China has condemned the UK, the US and others for giving weapons to Ukraine's military, saying they were adding "fuel to the fire".
If the US intelligence assessment is correct and Beijing follows through on that request, then they too would be "adding fuel".
bbc
