Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — Friday’s crude oil prices mixed as an eagerly anticipated phone call between China’s presidents failed to deliver any clarity on the future of Ukraine. 

Both sides kept their early prepared statements to the bare minimum. However, they are likely to add more information to an otherwise short call which lasted nearly two hours. 

China expressed concerns about the effects of Western sanctions against Russia. These have pushed energy prices up and threatened to cut a full percentage point from world growth, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This could potentially have an disproportionately big impact on China as the largest exporter in the world.

Futures rose 0.4% to $103.36 per barrel by 11:40 ET (1540 GMT) while the international benchmark fell 0.3% to $106.31 per barrel.

U.S. was down 1.5% to $3.1680 per gallon. They are now almost 20% lower than their record-setting high earlier in the month. However, this is still quite above the comfort zone of the U.S. Economy and an amount that, if sustained, would continue to fuel inflation across a larger range goods and services.

As a result, Biden’s efforts to generate international pressure against Russia have been limited. Its political ties in the Middle East after a decade-long conflict in Syria, and eight years of nearly uninterrupted oil production coordination with OPEC has led other major producers like Saudi Arabia and UAE to stand by their commitments and support the so-called OPEC+ bloc. They are not pumping oil to replace Russian barrels that have been blocked from the global market by sanctions.

The UAE-based newspaper The National earlier reported that the planned Secretary of State visit to Gulf will no longer take place. It was scheduled for late this month. 

The sanctions effect remains in any case largely indirect, due to the fact that Russia’s energy exports are exempted from the measures imposed by the EU and U.S.  That has allowed other big importers such as India and China to work on expanding schemes aimed at circumventing the dollar-based financial system in order to keep supplies flowing. According to Kpler data, India’s Russian imports have increased by three times in a year since last month. 

Russia had earlier stated that the schedule of its ports and pipelines that normally serve Western markets expects a slight increase in exports during the second quarter. This is in contrast to the previous one. However, it is not known how solid the crude offtake will be.

The signs that Covid’s winter wave continues to recede supported the prices. Germany plans to remove most restrictions beginning Monday. Local authorities have also pledged a rapid relaxation of measures in Shenzhen which is China’s manufacturing capital and home to more than 17 million people. China cancelled thousands of flights in China over the past week due to outbreaks in Shenzhen, the northeastern provincial of Jilin, and other factors. Authorities imposed tightest restrictions on activities in 2 years — although they were not as restrictive as at the time of the pandemic.