Allowing more Russian oil onto the market could help ease the upward pressure on the oil price.
But Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at Dutch bank ING, said the US move would “only scratch the surface” of the supply disruption in the Persian Gulf.
CREA estimates Russia has around 50m barrels of oil at sea it can now sell under the waiver.
Russia has said it has double that amount of oil at sea, or 100m barrels, but still less than a single day’s global demand for oil, at 104m barrels.
“There is only one solution for the oil market and that is getting oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz,” Patterson said.
Patterson said the countries most likely to buy up the newly-available Russian oil would be India and other Asian countries who have been most affected by the closure of the strait.
Around a fifth of oil traded globally passes through the Strait of Hormuz in normal times. That trade has hit a virtual standstill, reducing the supply of oil on the global market, raising fears that disruption may go on for some time, and pushing the price up sharply.
In turn that has worried politicians who see a renewed threat to inflation through higher energy costs.
Hilgenstock said the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz had pushed the West’s anti-Russian sanctions regime beyond its limits.
Sanctions against Russia relied on the global oil market being able to work around the hit to overall oil supplies, he said.
“The challenge in the Strait of Hormuz is so massive, that ability is gone for now.”
“There is not much that we can do until it is over.”