CHINA - China is paying the deepest discounts in months for Russian ESPO crude oil amid weak demand and poor refining margins even though the effective prices refiners pay could exceed a price cap imposed this week by Western countries. The $60 per-barrel cap, set by the Group of Seven (G7)nations, the European Union and Australia, took effect on Monday to limit Moscow's power to finance its war in Ukraine, though Russia has vowed to defy it.
China, Russia's top oil buyer, has not agreed to the price cap. Traders said they were doing business as usual. China's independent refiners, dominant clients of ESPO, a grade exported from the Russian Far East port of Kozmino, secure the shipments almost all on delivered basis from traders who arrange shipping and insurance, shielding the refiners from possible secondary sanctions that may result from the price cap.
With the price cap in place, China, India and Turkey could have more bargaining power, the analysts added. In Shandong, a province with many independent refiners, known as teapots, ESPO is also facing increasing competition particularly from Iranian oil, which traded at a discount of nearly $10 against ICE Brent last week.
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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