G7 leaders meeting at a summit in Germany will kick off work to put in place a cap mechanism on Russian oil to hit a major source of Moscow's revenue, a senior White House official has said.

The G7 will "ask ministers to work urgently on the development of an oil price cap, consulting third countries and the private sector, with the aim of putting such a cap in place", assured this responsible a few hours from the end of the summit.

The final communiqué expected at the end of this meeting, which is taking place in southern Germany, will therefore include an agreement in principle on the development of this unprecedented and complex mechanism which would aim to prevent Russia from selling its oil to the above a certain price.

Reaching a consensus on this subject would be "a fairly spectacular step forward" and "one of the most significant results" of the G7, the US president's main diplomatic adviser, Jake Sullivan, had estimated the day before.

However, he recognized the technical difficulty of such a project: "It's not something we can pull out of our drawers as if it were a method already tested and approved... it's a new concept".

A complexity also underlined by specialists in the energy sector. The private sector, including insurance and transport professionals, should be involved in this mechanism.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the question of how to sanction Russian hydrocarbons has been one of the thorniest for Westerners as energy tariffs have soared and weigh on power. household purchases.