RE: BRICS Sale29 Sep 2022 16:51
Crucially, there are currently no sanctions on Russian nickel, which is still available under a London Metal Exchange (LME) warrant. The LME is anxious to avoid a repeat of events that took place in March after the initial sanctions were announced against Russia, where the price of nickel skyrocketed to above $100,000 a tonne in ‘disorderly trade’, before the LME suspended trading for more than a week.
Meanwhile, the squeeze against the heads of Russia’s metals companies is slowly being ramped up. At the end of June, the UK slapped sanctions on Potanin as part of its ongoing package of measures against Russia for its invasion of the Ukraine. The UK move shows that not even the richest metals oligarchs are immune from censure.
Potanin has an estimated net worth of $15.7bn and faces an asset freeze, travel ban, transport sanctions and a block on technical advice as a result of the UK sanctions. A senior Norilsk executive said its lawyers were studying the impact of “personal sanctions on our president and major shareholder”, but the West is unlikely to want to repeat the errors it made in 2018 when the LME banned aluminium produced by Rusal.
The ban followed similar sanctions imposed by the US and created major disruptions for firms in the transport, construction and packaging industries. It also resulted in a jump in aluminium prices of up to 30% in a matter of just a few days after the sanctions were imposed. Less than a year later, the US was forced to backtrack and lift the sanctions.
A similar move against Norilsk Nickel would also backfire by multiplying the pain across nickel, copper, palladium and platinum, which are all metals key to the transition to a lower-carbon economy.