Russia's top lawmaker: West's energy price cap will fail, price will rise

Russia's top lawmaker said on Friday that Western plans to introduce a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports would fail and that prices would soar far beyond their attempted artificial price ceiling.

Russia's top lawmaker said on Friday that Western plans to introduce a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports would fail and that prices would soar far beyond their attempted artificial price ceiling. "What G7 state officials call a price 'ceiling' will become a price floor," Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, wrote on his Telegram channel.

"The global market is not limited to seven countries," he said. "The marginal price announced by the West will become the lower bar." Volodin said that the countries involved had realised their dependency on Russian energy, that efforts to replace oil and gas imports from the country had failed, and that they would no longer be able to purchase fuel from Russia "on the cheap".

The Group of Seven (G7) wealthy democracies announced plans to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports last week in a move that could also restrict Russia's ability to secure tankers and insurance from countries beyond the G7. Speaking in Vladivostok on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off energy supplies if price caps are imposed on Russia's oil and gas exports, warning the West it would be "frozen" like a wolf's tail in a famous Russian fairy tale.