By Andrea Shalal and Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A number of oil-importing countries are considering joining the G7's plan to cap the price of Russian oil, Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Thursday, adding that the group would issue related rules in the next few days.
Adeyemo, in an interview with Yahoo! News, said that India, a major importer of Russian oil, had agreed to continue talks about whether to join the Group of Seven's price cap initiative and that Washington hoped China would also consider it.
The rules will explain how importers can use financial products such as insurance to ship Russian oil, as long as the price was under the agreed cap, he added.
If the price was above the oil price cap, which has not yet been set, Russia would need to find "other, more expensive ways to ship their oil," Adeyemo said.
The Group of Seven wealthy nations, which is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, on Friday agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil.
Adeyemo did not disclose the target price for the cap, but said it should be effective, even if India and other oil-importing countries do not join in, since it would create more transparency and put those countries in a better position to negotiate lower prices with Russia.
"We're going to set the price of oil above Russia's price of production. We're going to give them the ability to use G7 services to sell their oil, as long as it's sold under the price cap," he said, adding that strategy was starting to bear fruit.
"We've already seen that Russia is negotiating with some countries prices as low as with a 30% discount on the current price of oil," he said. He gave no details, and did not identify the countries that had expressed interest in joining up.