- cross-posted to:
- russia@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- russia@sopuli.xyz
cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45242833
Russian oil companies significantly reduced their production of crude oil in December due to the impact of US sanctions on export sales, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
Last month, the total amount of Russian oil extracted fell by over 100,000 barrels per day, to 9.326 million barrels, a source familiar with the official statistics, which have been classified since 2022, told Bloomberg.
The drop in output is the greatest since mid-2024, when Russia cut production under an agreement with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Bloomberg continued. Now, however, Russia is at liberty to increase oil production, yet December’s output showed an unexpected fall and is now 250,000 barrels below the daily quota agreed with OPEC and its allies in November.
Russian oil companies are finding it increasingly difficult to sell Russian crude overseas, as although Russian tankers shipped 3.87 million barrels a day of crude in the four weeks to 21 December, Bloomberg said, there were increased delays in offloading cargoes “with a build-up of vessels anchored off the coasts of India and China”, the Kremlin’s two largest customers.
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I think this is underselling OPEC’s roll increasing supply to depress the demand for bootleg oil.
Perhaps more significantly, Ukraine has also done considerable damage to Russia’s refineries and pipelines. And it’s unclear how much of this is due to US sanctions, especially when the EU has just sent a metric shit-ton of money to Ukraine as loans collateralized with frozen Russian oligarch assets.
This is very good news. Many of those wells will freeze over and become unusable likely for decades if they are left off.
Literally freeze? How does this work where they could be shut down for decades?
I’ve been watching landman, but I’m not an expert in oil drilling yet.
Yes literally freeze. A lot of these wells are in Siberia and if you close them they will freeze down to the bedrock again. Which means they basically have to rebuild the whole well again from scratch. Redrill it and then build it again.
The last time this happened was when the Soviet Union collapsed and it took them ~20 years and a lot of Western assistance to bring them back online.
If you are interested in exploring the topic more, Peter Zeihan covers it in some depth in his books and occasionally in summary in his videos like this one.
Awesome! Thanks for the vid. I didn’t realize the oil could actually freeze.
