If the idea of Chinese-owned Oregon wind farms cut too close for comfort for the US, is Russian-owned oil and gasoline trading really going to sail through?
Now there’s a question for the deal that Morgan Stanley struck last year to sell its oil trading operations for an undisclosed sum to Rosneft, the Russian state-owned producer. The sale is in early days still. But it faces scrutiny from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (which blew away the wind farm deal) at some point. Months after the deal was signed, Russian troops rolled into Crimea and made the prospect of the state oil company getting to know the US market rather geopolitically challenged. So what happens if the Rosneft deal faces regulatory resistance?
A lot will depend on the split between physical and financial trading of oil. Morgan Stanley has long had the most physical presence of the US banks that traded in these markets. In oil, the bank can draw on 30m barrels of storage capacity – from Brownsville, Texas to Norfolk, Virginia – via indirect control of TransMontaigne Partners.