Sweeping U.S. sanctions on Russia's oil industry will make it more expensive for Moscow to sell its oil and complicate sea-borne crude exports due to restrictions on tankers, analysts and traders said on Monday.

Three tankers carrying more than 2 million barrels of Russian oil are floating in the waters off the coast of east China and cannot be unloaded after the United States imposed new sanctions on Russia's largest oil companies on Friday,

Russian oil exports will be hurt severely by the new sanctions, pushing China and India, the world’s top and third-largest oil importers respectively, to source more crude from the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, which will boost prices and shipping costs, traders and analysts said.