Bob Koure
1 min readDec 26, 2022

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>>Russia is a significant player in the oil and natural gas world

With Western petro majors (mostly BP) and petro contractors gone post-invasion, we could see this change. Case in point: the recent pipeline explosion near Cheboksary (Chuvash oblast), which I take to be an attempt to do work normally done by one of the now-exited petro contractors gone wrong. From looking at a pipeline map, it's not clear that that's the only way for gas/oil to get from those wells to market. If one of those -in-permafrost wells can't keep flowing, it'll freeze and likely break from any water expanding and will need to be 'shut in'. There were a number of these wells shut in post '89 collapse, that only started back up in the teens (and that thanks to BP).

So, output from those wells could be gone for good, and I'd expect it to be (to paraphrase Hemmingway) gradually, then suddenly.

To be clear, this is not all Russian wells, but there's a good number of them in permafrost.

OTOH, China appears to be on point of collapse, so we could see a drop in global demand. I expect that to have an effect on solar panel prices, particularly as assembly in China is done by Uighurs being 'reeducated' (which I consider to be slave labor).

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Bob Koure
Bob Koure

Written by Bob Koure

Retired software architect, statistical analyst, hotel mgr, bike racer, distance swimmer. Photographer. Amateur historian. Avid reader. Home cook. Never-FBer

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