https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2022/8/17/russia-sees-38-rise-in-energy-export-earnings-this-year-reuters

Higher oil export volumes, coupled with rising petrol prices, will boost Russia’s earnings from energy exports to $337.5bn this year, a 38 percent rise from 2021, according to an economy ministry document seen by Reuters news agency.

great job by western leaders deciding to pump the price of oil to “starve the beast”

To be fair, the prices for oil and natural gas were already trending upward throughout 2021. Also keep in mind that the first half of 2021 was still dominated by covid restrictions in much of europe, so a substantial YOY increase in revenue had to be expected anyway. Also note that Russia's earnings soar, in part, because they themselves have squeezed the market. This means that Russia is increasing its short-term profits at the expense of its long-term revenue, which will plummet even harder starting in 2024.


But yeah, even if we consider all these points, our energy sanctions have still, at best, been a wash for Russia's finances while they inflicted significant economic pain on ourselves. Energy sanction were a moronic idea from the get go, I already said so back in March and April...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 19 2022 01:34am

I honestly think European politicians are incredibly stupid and just followed the herd to do what's expected or they really do not care about their people. It didn't take a PhD to see what would happen.

Instead of buying oil from Russia for cheaper, they chose to buy Russian oil via Saudi Arabia while the Saudis are arbitraging and laughing to the bank.

Modern society relies on energy in various forms to help humans who are fragile and feeble do things (humans generate a bit of energy from food themselves to move their limbs and think). Energy poverty is not new and is quite a big issue nowadays in developing markets of Africa, Asia and South America. What's new is that due to political processes within Developed World - energy security has been compromised too soon to achieve ambitious climate targets without proper planning or backup options. No nuclear/hydro stations have been built in Europe (Olkiluoto 3 is the only reactor commissioned in Europe in decades since Bulgarians commissioned Kozloduy in 1994. France hasn't commissioned new reactors since 1980s and are freeriding on smart policies of their predecessors while demand in increasing with computers/cooling/EVs pushing demand higher and higher). You need to generate electricity from something to do things you do every day (either burn fuel in your car, or burn fuel in nuclear/coal/gas stations or convert wind/solar energy into kwh). Almost everything you do consumes some energy.

Netherlands for instance (where I'm from) for years have been mostly generating its electricity from Gas (Groningen field have helped that) and Coal (due to coal being abundant in western Europe in 19th/early 20th century). There is a nuclear reactor in Borselle, but it is quite small and old - about 30% of nameplate capacity of what Finland just commissioned. There is a push diversify into renewables by generating power locally (on your own roof) or centralized (via windfarms), but this will take decades to reach any significant amounts and is intermittent which means it cannot be relied upon to generate electricity without backups (eg during the night). There are no known sources to story energy for multiple days. People like Elon Musks are experimenting with emergency backups - but these are not viable to back-up a city or a country scale for even 24hours yet to my knowledge and are limited by battery materials availability (hello cobalt required to stabilize your batteries from exploding).

Now what happened is that people somehow believed that you can go completely off Gas and Coal at the same time and still be able to power yourself in The Netherlands. Coal has been banned, investments prohibited, plants in the process of being shut down. People made significant political careers protesting against kolencentrales. Groningen field is being closed. Netherlands never really imported significant amounts of gas (compared to Germany) from Russia as the pipelines from Russia end in Germany and continue via gas interconnectors to Den Helder.

Now the question is - how do we afford moving things around if we no longer want to generate electricity with 80% of our base generation capacity? How do afford to heat ourselves during winters (i pray 2022/2023 is a mild one) or cool during summers? Realistic answer - we don't. Majority of the world is struggling to afford to drive a car, heat or cool their houses or have electricity in the evening to power their computers/ lights (see Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India e.t.c.). We grind to a halt as a society and stop functioning with prices rising exorbitantly so only a few who can afford to heat themselves and fuel their car with renewable biodiesels or what not. The rest get to enjoy the shortsightedness of policies that undermined energy security.

The scariest part about that is majority of new nuclear reactors currently built are being built by ... ... the Russians. They need an outlet for all the enriched uranium they have which they get from dismantling old nukes. They will get to control the world, albeit mostly developing world for now, which has been long forsaken and abandoned by colonizers once their resources ran dry).

Thank you for the post, appreciate how thoughtful it is. There's nothing you said that I disagree with.

I've been saying for a few years now that we are many decades away from being able to fully transition to renewables and politicians too eager to be on the 'right' side of history cannibalized and took for granted current energy requirements.

2021, especially first half, was still a "covid" year, with low prices and demand. 2022 is burst of demand. So comparing 2022 to 2021 is not the best.
Russia can and will increase a price for energy, but it can only do it once, this year, as Europe will simply convert to another sources of energy in the next few years. Maybe the war will continue over the few years, who knows.
Also the real effect of sanctions you need to measure following way:
compare current Russia earnings, when they need to sell oil with 35usd discount "price of blood", with earnings it would get if Europe kept buying their resources at any price like nothing happened.

russia will claim “victory” with some nonsense territory grab; and wrap up the war efforts to offset lower oil prices

watch for produce exports to remain sky high

Russian government is against their people.
Ukraine government is against their people.
Where have i seen this before?
Oh yeah, in every western country also....

This post was edited by sirthom on Aug 20 2022 08:38am