New York: In 2020 alone, Russia was the third-biggest supplier of foreign petroleum for the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and responsible for 7 percent of imported oil. Russia also exported $13 billion in mineral fuels to the U.S. in 2019, accounting for more than half of all such imports sent to America.
Notably, prices are rising even though sanctions imposed on Russia have so far excluded the energy sector, a decision President Biden said he made in order “to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump.”
“Russia’s invasion and the responding escalating series of financial sanctions by the U.S. and its allies have given the global oil market the jitters,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said in a statement.
The U.S. and other major oil-consuming countries were weighing the release of 70 million barrels of oil from emergency stockpiles in response to the rising crude prices.
Farmers in the US are bracing for a hike in the price of fertilizer, which was already at a record-high before the conflict.
Russia — which is a low-cost, high-volume global producer of fertilizers — is the world’s second-largest producer after Canada of potash, a key nutrient used on major commodity crops and produce, according to Bloomberg.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen more than 7 percent, the S&P 500 index is down more than 9 percent and the Nasdaq composite has fallen roughly 13 percent since the start of 2022, and investment experts are bracing for more speed bumps after years of torrid gains.
Higher energy and food prices and deeper supply chain bottlenecks could put pressure on inflation and force the Fed to accelerate its pending series of rate hikes.
To combat inflation, the Fed is set to begin raising interest rates when it meets in two weeks, reversing the ultra-low-rate policies it adopted in 2020 to help rescue the economy from the pandemic recession.
