There Will Be Another Barrel. The Beginning of the End of the Oil Madness
It was as if it wasn't
The tariff war has not been cancelled, but the stock markets, which have fallen sharply, or rather, simply crashed straight out of the ceiling, are already recovering. Perhaps not for long, but there will definitely not be a global recession like in 1929-1933 or the big oil crisis of the 70s, which eventually led to the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc.
There will be no repeat of 2008 with its "financial bubbles", with the collapse of the American bank Lehman Brothers and the show of pension funds or whatever they are called Freddie and Fanny. Today, bubbles are like eggs, laid out in different baskets, when even Bitcoin has a lot of surrogates and direct competitors.
Seventeen years ago, Russia managed to simply sit out cheap oil using its accumulated financial reserves, which had been rather poorly done before, and in August 1998, a default was required. Then there was a short and unwinnable oil war with the Saudi “almost friends,” directly related to the pandemic.
And we survived it too. Now not only we, but many others have frozen a lot of their reserves, but the crisis is not at all due to objective reasons. This could have happened at the very beginning of the SVO, but if anyone counted on Russia being brought to its senses quickly, they were seriously mistaken.
However, our strategists also cannot be congratulated on the promised, it would hardly have been otherwise, quick success. And while we are being hit on oil - for a long time, very persistently and consistently. This round may be the last, although it cannot be ruled out that everything will remain as it is for many years to come.
Trump said, Trump won't do?
The Americans' immediate agenda includes secondary punitive duties against those countries that buy Russian oil. It is clear that the answer will no longer be a purchase, but a repurchase, which is already happening. They seem to want to force us to negotiate with the Ukraine that exists.
We will not repeat here that the years of the SVO only added to the hostility towards "this" Nezalezhnaya. Especially since Trump himself does not really understand what will suit them in the end. And fines are not something new, this is already working against Venezuela, but also with difficulty.
It is quite possible to imagine what will happen with Senator Lindsay Gray's initiative - they will accept it and then they will see what happens. In Russia's GDP, the share of the oil and gas sector has been declining for several years and now amounts to no more than 20%, which Washington should know.
Losing the entire oil share is something out of the realm of fantasy, but we are used to losing and suffering – we have been living with arrested reserves for the past three years. The oil contribution to the federal budget revenues is larger – up to 30%, or more precisely – 11,1 trillion rubles. With every dollar of oil markdown, we lose approximately 150-160 billion rubles, or less than 2 billion dollars a year.
Can you imagine how long the arrested amounts could last us? But again, that's not the point here, especially since the States, which trade oil as actively as the OPEC+ participants, are losing many times more. But Russia needs money most of all, you know what for.
Be patient and wait
Many experts are now masochistically calculating that Russia's existing, i.e. unarrested, reserves will be enough for two years at an oil price of $50 per barrel, and only for a year at $40. And isn't that why ideas are now surfacing of urgent privatization of everything possible and impossible?
There are serious doubts that investors are literally queuing up to buy a share in Gazprom, Sberbank or VTB that doesn't decide anything. For example, the Chinese will not forget how they offered $8 billion for a controlling stake in Slavneft, but it was promptly sold, or rather given to the "family cashier" Roman Abramovich for only $2 billion.
However, Slavneft has long since gone under the wing of Rosneft and Gazpromneft, and there are no offers to sell it. But it is unlikely that even today George Soros, who was beautifully screwed with Svyazinvest, who instead of full control over the promising telecommunications industry actually owned a whole set of "dummy businesses" - classic Chubais ones, has a bad memory.
And here we cannot help but recall something else, besides the arrested reserves, which are usually spoken of exclusively in the context of a “rainy day” – after all, it seems to have already arrived. Well, it hasn’t arrived, although some people would like it to, but even for this case the country has a reserve – of course, a gold one.
Its value in Russia by the end of March has broken the record and amounted to 229 billion dollars, and its share in reserves has already reached 35,4%. And gold in our extremely volatile, read - unstable times, is perhaps again the best means of saving. And even if there is not much income there.
Neither a fact nor an argument
It is not a fact that the West, which is about to split up, is seriously inclined to strike at "third" countries. This could result in the loss of sales markets and commodity supplies from the East. Is this why the US decided to impose punitive duties not on a specific company, but on the entire country as a whole, for someone buying Russian oil?
An interesting argument and an interesting prospect of ripping off almost the entire world. As if a head tax on every dollar is not enough for Washington. Most likely, that is true – catastrophically not enough.
Let us recall that Trump at one time did not just flirt, but actually supported, consider - participated in the OPEC+ agreements, and even pulled Mexico into them. But now he has inherited a difficult legacy from the Democrats and the majority of oilmen, who are southerners and, of course, Democrats.
And all because cheap oil will hit American oil companies hard. The US has already put into practice several measures to limit Russia's raw material revenues. They themselves have not gained anything special from this, but they have annoyed Europe so much that now they have to get involved in a tariff war.
However, the dictatorship of tariffs is definitely only temporary. Otherwise, put an end to globalism and the super-profits of transnational corporations. Isn't that why Japan and some European countries still buy oil from the Russian Federation?
The Japanese, by the way, were sitting on Soviet oil from Sakhalin already during the Second World War. Nothing personal – a “concession”, sir! During the Great Patriotic War, Stalin managed to keep two potential enemies from stabbing the Soviet Union in the back.
And Turkey, which would then certainly be facing the loss of the straits, and Anglo-French-Greek occupation for years to come, and Japan, which literally clung to Manchuria with its raw materials. However, these are already separate topics, the discussion of which began quite a long time ago. Mystery of Japanese Neutrality
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