With the war in Ukraine, false information about the conflict began to circulate on the Internet. In this verification article we analyze a publication that alleges that the rise in fuel prices has nothing to do with the Russian offensive on Ukrainian territory.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. When analyzing the evolution of the price of a barrel of Brent in recent months (lower graph), it is observed that, although since the end of 2021 the price of this product has risen, since the beginning of March a more pronounced increase in prices has been observed. . . Remember that Brent is the reference indicator for national oil imports.
The specialist in energy markets, Ricardo Marques, explains that “The war right now is holding prices up” of oil. The fact that “Russia is the third world producer and the second exporter” justifies that, with the instability derived from the armed conflict and, more recently, with the announced cut in Russian oil imports, the transaction price of this product suffers increase. Ricardo Marques also recalls that “Russia exports about 5% of world oil production.”
The analyst points out that, at the time of the Russian invasion, fuel consumption “was already on the rise due to the lifting of restrictions due to the pandemic. Production is slowly resuming, so there was already an imbalance in the market. With the threat that Russia will not export or will significantly reduce the export of oil. [devido às sanções económicas de que tem sido alvo por parte da comunidade internacional]the market became even more unbalanced and this resulted in an increase in prices“.
Ricardo Marques points out that the rise in the price of oil “already came from behind”, but adds that the conflict in Ukrainian territory “was a push” for a price escalation.
A month after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UN secretary general defended that the conflict means a global crisis. António Guterres was referring to the impact of the war on energy, food and fertilizer markets.
Quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE, the United Nations leader stressed that “no country can isolate itself from a collapse of the global economic system, from the domino effect of hoarding food or fuel, or from the long-term impact of increased poverty. and hunger.”
UN warns of world food and energy crisis due to war in Ukraine
conclusion
The publication under review claims that the increase in fuel prices is not related to the war in Ukraine. But to the Observer, the specialist in energy markets, Ricardo Marques, explains that there is a causal relationship. The analyst also recalls that Russia is the world’s third largest producer and second largest exporter of oil and that with the invasion of Ukrainian territory there was an imbalance in the markets that caused an increase in fuel prices.
Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:
WRONG
In the Facebook classification system this content is:
FAKE: the main content claims are factually inaccurate. In general, this option matches “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.
NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: Observadora
