Category: Infrastructure and Transport (including energy)

As of 27 September 2024, the position as regards OFSI’s investigations into alleged breaches of the UK’s oil price cap was as follows (covering the period from 5 December 2022 to 21 August 2024:

• total number of investigations commenced: 60
• total number of investigations commenced where the alleged suspect is a UK person or company: 52
• total number of investigations which remain open: 42
• total number of investigations which remain open where the alleged suspect is a UK person or company: 37

These figures revise those we published last month which were based on the BBC’s reporting of the results of a Freedom of Information request it had made to OFSI.

After obtaining a copy of what was released to the BBC by making our own Freedom of Information request we have been able to revise the figures. The BBC did not include in its figures the investigations into non-UK persons potentially breaching the UK’s oil price cap.

What the complete figures reveal is that a further 8 investigations have been commenced into non-UK persons suspected of breaching the oil price cap, of which 5 remain ongoing.

A copy of HM Treasury’s response to our asking for the response provided to the BBC is here.

The BBC is reporting the results of a Freedom of Information Act request it has made to OFSI.

The response itself is not currently on the website of either OFSI or HM Treasury.

The BBC is reporting the following statistics:

• 52 investigations opened since December 2022
• 15 of those have been concluded with no further action taken; and
• 37 of the investigations are ongoing.

As per our earlier post, in an earlier Freedom of Information response OFSI confirmed that as of April 2024 it had started 12 investigations of which 9 had been discontinued without action taken.

As such 40 new oil price cap investigations have been started since April 2024.

Since April six investigations have been concluded.

It is being reported (here albeit behind a paywall), that as of April 2024 the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) had twelve ongoing investigations relating to possible breaches of the oil price cap imposed as part of the UK’s sanctions against Russia.

The information comes from a Freedom of Information Act request made by the publication Trade Winds. The response is not available on OFSI’s website.

OFSI is also reported to have confirmed that 9 of the twelve investigations were discontinued in April 2024 with no further action taken.

No information was provided on the current status of the other three investigations that were live in April, or whether any further investigations have been commenced since April.

As noted in our previous post from May, at that stage HM Treasury had stated that it “a number of investigations” then ongoing into alleged oil price cap breaches.