It is almost like an economy that gets most of its revenue from oil and gas would want oil and gas price to go up so that it makes more money.
You would almost think high oil prices hurt the US and West more than it hurts Russia.
That can't be the case though because we have such brilliant and competent leaders that have thought through all the variables as opposed to making rash emotional decisions because they are also addicted to social media like the general population.
"Janet Yellen, the United States Treasury secretary, said last week that Washington was in talks with its European allies about forming a cartel that would set a cap on the price of Russian oil roughly equal to the price of production."
I don't understand how anyone can think that would work.
We are in an inflation spiral driven by loose monetary and fiscal policies in the west. As long as that persists, Russia and other commodities producers will be at an advantage.
We are caught in an ideological trap and blame everything on Russia. The sanctions have no short-term effect and it is doubtful whether they will have any medium-term effect at all.
At the same time, we became ideologically blind and realpolitik no longer seemed to stand a chance. I wonder how long it will be before ordinary people start fighting back against the current ideologically charged "value politics" or just lose trust in the system.
We in Germany try everything to prevent that. e.g. huge energy cost subsidies - which unfortunately have no effect and only make people angrier as they see the failure of the state. The oil companies raised prices, the normal citizen does pay the bill. It is understandable that people get angry. Well, now we're having funny talks about expropriations in Parliament, just to calm people down, I think. History has proven that this type of market manipulation does not work – the debates of the established parties are now so close to populism.
And finally, the ideological war has forgotten that during Covid we had unlimited money supply and the ECB is caught in a debt trap with too little room to maneuver. The war itself does not bring all of the problems we are experiencing, such as the dire food shortages approaching in the fall of 22 or the slowdown in economic output in Western Europe.
It is the sanctions that have led to all this, not the war per se. At the same time people are being told that the whole war is to blame for all of this and not the decision to put sanctions ahead of economic interests, global stability and eventually Covid – remember the inflation rate was 7% before the invasion.
I think nobody cares anymore and it's easy to just yell at Putin - instead of criticizing the West's terrible political response and acknowledging the post-Covid effect (and obviously disagreeing with the war on a moral level, but not in this blind, activist, aggressive type).
I have lost confidence in our Western (German) politics, no longer feel represented by any of the major parties and have stopped voting - and so have many of my friends. Only my opinionated, ideologically motivated friends are very active.
> We are in an ideological trap, blaming Russia for everything.
The ideological trap is not only related to Russia but to everything. The West uses - as you also point out - ideology for everything: Pandemic, migrations, climate, culture, economics... Those who don't want to play along are blamed. The West thinks it has a leverage over the World Outside of the West but that isn't the case anymore. Both the elites and the people in the World Outside of the West realize it and they are turning away, leaving the West in it's own echo chamber.
As I wrote here three months ago: The West is ~1 billion people, the World Outside of the West is ~6 billion. The West needs the World Outside of the West for its own enrichment through robbery and enslavement, World Outside of the West doesn't need the West because it doesn't want to be robbed and enslaved by the West anymore.
Irrespective of what leaders in the West think, there was a titanic reorientation when the West weaponized their financial markets against Russia with the implicit threat that they will do so to others. The world took note and acted accordingly.
None whatsoever. There are some Russian appologists making the rounds. Fact of the matter is that Russian oil exports are in decline, but the rising oil prices has made up for the difference. This increase is not sustainable. To get back to pre february export levels, Russia has to build a pipeline to China.
> Though Russia’s fossil fuel exports have started to fall somewhat by volume, as more countries and companies shun trading with Moscow, surging prices have more than canceled out the effects of that decline.
Good luck trying to swap rubles to dollars with that exchange rate. They block foreigners from their stock exchange which prevented the collapse in prices. They blocked people from trading their rubles to usd or eur to prevent the exchange rate from soaring. Normal people cannot do anything there. So that exchange rate and their stock market is nothing to be proud of or point to.
I think people who point to today's Oil revenue as proof of anything are fooling themselves. We all know that changing a country's energy strategy takes time, but once it happens it will permanently damage Russia. In the meantime, we just have to find ways to mitigate this (which I'm not sure has been done well), but the high prices are a great extra fuel to drive moving away from Russia oil.
The big thing that talking about Russian oil revenue misses is that basically the entire rest of their economy is fucked.
There seems to be a step missing in the logic of many comments.
Russia started a war which helped propel already rising oil/gas prices (due to a resumption of demand at the end of COVID) to rise even higher (due to uncertainty of the war).
So even before they started the war, they were going to make more money on oil. Then they started the war and again, they're going to be able to take advantage of the further price rises.
So if the west did nothing at all, then their oil revenues are going up.
As a response to the war, some Russian exports including oil and gas were embargoed, though not to the extent that other more easily sourced items have been, since they're easier to replace from other sources.
And it seems we're focusing in on one specific factoid, the decrease of oil sales in the first 100 days due to embarfoes, didn't offset the price rises from the the other things.
That seems a weird stat to focus on?
Kind of like if a wife shot her husband and the headline was the husband succeeded in landing more punches during the first 10 minutes of the fight.
Yeah, maybe he did, but she shot him, why are we abitrarily dividing up the different parts of the same fight to suit our narrative?
16 comments
[ 587 ms ] story [ 97.5 ms ] threadYou would almost think high oil prices hurt the US and West more than it hurts Russia.
That can't be the case though because we have such brilliant and competent leaders that have thought through all the variables as opposed to making rash emotional decisions because they are also addicted to social media like the general population.
I don't understand how anyone can think that would work.
We are in an inflation spiral driven by loose monetary and fiscal policies in the west. As long as that persists, Russia and other commodities producers will be at an advantage.
At the same time, we became ideologically blind and realpolitik no longer seemed to stand a chance. I wonder how long it will be before ordinary people start fighting back against the current ideologically charged "value politics" or just lose trust in the system.
We in Germany try everything to prevent that. e.g. huge energy cost subsidies - which unfortunately have no effect and only make people angrier as they see the failure of the state. The oil companies raised prices, the normal citizen does pay the bill. It is understandable that people get angry. Well, now we're having funny talks about expropriations in Parliament, just to calm people down, I think. History has proven that this type of market manipulation does not work – the debates of the established parties are now so close to populism.
And finally, the ideological war has forgotten that during Covid we had unlimited money supply and the ECB is caught in a debt trap with too little room to maneuver. The war itself does not bring all of the problems we are experiencing, such as the dire food shortages approaching in the fall of 22 or the slowdown in economic output in Western Europe.
It is the sanctions that have led to all this, not the war per se. At the same time people are being told that the whole war is to blame for all of this and not the decision to put sanctions ahead of economic interests, global stability and eventually Covid – remember the inflation rate was 7% before the invasion.
I think nobody cares anymore and it's easy to just yell at Putin - instead of criticizing the West's terrible political response and acknowledging the post-Covid effect (and obviously disagreeing with the war on a moral level, but not in this blind, activist, aggressive type).
I have lost confidence in our Western (German) politics, no longer feel represented by any of the major parties and have stopped voting - and so have many of my friends. Only my opinionated, ideologically motivated friends are very active.
The ideological trap is not only related to Russia but to everything. The West uses - as you also point out - ideology for everything: Pandemic, migrations, climate, culture, economics... Those who don't want to play along are blamed. The West thinks it has a leverage over the World Outside of the West but that isn't the case anymore. Both the elites and the people in the World Outside of the West realize it and they are turning away, leaving the West in it's own echo chamber.
As I wrote here three months ago: The West is ~1 billion people, the World Outside of the West is ~6 billion. The West needs the World Outside of the West for its own enrichment through robbery and enslavement, World Outside of the West doesn't need the West because it doesn't want to be robbed and enslaved by the West anymore.
> Though Russia’s fossil fuel exports have started to fall somewhat by volume, as more countries and companies shun trading with Moscow, surging prices have more than canceled out the effects of that decline.
Russia built an oil pipeline to northern China ten years ago [1], and more recently added a gas pipeline along more or less the same route [2].
So the question is not about building a pipeline but about upgrading an existing pipeline's capacity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Siberia%E2%80%93Pacifi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_Siberia
The big thing that talking about Russian oil revenue misses is that basically the entire rest of their economy is fucked.
Russia started a war which helped propel already rising oil/gas prices (due to a resumption of demand at the end of COVID) to rise even higher (due to uncertainty of the war).
So even before they started the war, they were going to make more money on oil. Then they started the war and again, they're going to be able to take advantage of the further price rises.
So if the west did nothing at all, then their oil revenues are going up.
As a response to the war, some Russian exports including oil and gas were embargoed, though not to the extent that other more easily sourced items have been, since they're easier to replace from other sources.
And it seems we're focusing in on one specific factoid, the decrease of oil sales in the first 100 days due to embarfoes, didn't offset the price rises from the the other things.
That seems a weird stat to focus on?
Kind of like if a wife shot her husband and the headline was the husband succeeded in landing more punches during the first 10 minutes of the fight.
Yeah, maybe he did, but she shot him, why are we abitrarily dividing up the different parts of the same fight to suit our narrative?