Is Russia so irreplaceable? – Rosbalt
Read two passages and guess which one comes from fiery propagandists and which one comes from cold-blooded experiments.
“EU decisions to partially phase out oil and oil products in Russia, as well as to ban insurance for merchant ships, are highly likely to destabilize energy resources, disrupt supply chains… Will accelerate the looming global food crisis…”
“Europeans favor modern industry, household appliances and individual cars and go back to the 19th century. The standard of living in the EU will correspond to the level of the Central African countries…”
Many probably got the answer wrong. The first passage, dry and restrained by today’s standards, – statements Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the second passage, pumping up apocalypticism, is taken from report “Russia in the gas supermarket of Eurasia”, prepared by in-house analysts. Some cadres of experts are now running ahead of the locomotive.
But will the “unfriendly countries”, having lost Russian oil and gas, really return to the darkness of ancient centuries, and partially die of starvation along the way due to logistical problems with the delivery of domestic wheat? Let’s go through the points.
Oil. This will block the road in Europe to three to four million barrels of oil and petroleum products per day.
However, about 50 million barrels per day are sold and bought on the world market. Not to mention the fact that a rapid increase in production is not a serious task for many oil producers. it is not so difficult for Europeans to find Russian oil. The likelihood that OPEC producers will slightly agree to turn off the taps in their oil fields.
This problem is non-economic, political, and if it is solved (key manifestations with the Saudis, observed, manifesting this month), by the end of the year there will be a half-century history of domestic oil supplies in the future.
Gas. At first glance, the layouts are similar. The share of Russian gas in European imports (about 40%) is about the same as the share of domestic oil. But there is a fundamental difference. Oil can also be delivered by sea, but this cannot be done quickly with gas.
Although the share of liquefied gas in world sales has exceeded half, it is already more or less divided among the rest of the buyers. And for natural gas, additional pipelines from Norway, Algeria, Libya, Azerbaijan or Israel still need to be built.
Therefore, by good will, the Europeans in the next two or three years to declare a gas boycott of Russia, apparently, is not risky. Rather, Moscow will decide to say them at the cost of gas hara-kiri.
Transformation into central Africa, albeit a very unpleasant and cold winter of 2022-2023. With the ceiling temperature in the houses set at 16-18 degrees, a stop for several months of switching on, an additional surge in the installation – and with the start of a rapid recovery next year. Do not underestimate the reaction to the European economy. In this case, the emergence of a half-century history of the likelihood of domestic gas in Europe will stop a few years earlier than it could be.
Corn. When they talk about the prospects for an increase in hunger due to non-deliveries of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, they do not always specify exactly what this could hit. Certainly not in Europe and not in America. They are well stocked with food.
The main importer of Russia (6 million tons in world time) and Ukrainian (3.5 million tons at the same time) wheat is Egypt, which is not consumed in the category of “unfriendly countries”.
Bangladesh, Nigeria, Yemen and other poor countries are big buyers. If logistics prevent the import to Russia, and the fighting prevents Ukrainian wheat, then in some of these countries there may indeed be big supply disruptions and even starvation. But these sad stories have nothing to do with the great confrontation between our state and the West. The West is and will eat its fill.
Other connections. The damage from “unfriendly countries” from the possible overlap of a number of non-energy and non-food products – for example, ferrous and non-ferrous metals – is not, although in some cases tangible.
But the strength of the globalized economy is that it quickly plugs almost any hole. Instead of the Russian one becoming the future one, the Chinese one, which is already fully replacing it from the usual markets.
However, it is worth mentioning the consumption of payment not only in goods. Almost half of the turnover of the turnover of services is currently “spending by individuals on the territory of foreign countries”, i.e., Russians are spending on trips abroad. In pre-covid and pre-sanction 2019, they showed $ 36 billion. According to Olympic measures, this is a lot of money, but in the global tourism market they were insignificant. In addition, “unfriendly” consumption indicators accounted for only a part of them – with a total volume of no more than 0.1% of EU GDP.
In fact, there were several countries, for example, in Finland and Poland, which were places of mass pilgrimage for tourists and buyers, respectively from St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. But even on them, these hardships fell ill during the period of covid quarantines, and now the material wounds are almost licked.
The “collective West” surpasses Russia by almost ten times in terms of the number of inhabitants. And for various reasons, for the twentieth time – in terms of the size of the economy. It is not necessary to increase the mass character for him indispensable. Even the most severe of all phenomena of economic disintegration, with the immediate gas boycott, created major problems for them only within a few months. And then they’ll do it.
Vitaly Grankin