The oil revenue cash tap gives Putin a margin of leeway, who can afford to sacrifice a significant part of its gas revenues even when restricting his sales to Europe.
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They were all grossly wrong, those who predicted a collapse in Russian oil production. Putin effectively defied all forecasts because, with 10.8 million barrels/day (mb/d) pumped last July, Russian oil production was almost at the level of 11 mb/d last January, before the war. In fact, it has been three months since this production recovered significantly from the air pocket suffered in the months following the outbreak of the conflict, as Russia replaced its good European refiner customers with other markets.
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Asia in general and India in particular, but also the Middle East and Turkey represent the new markets, even if certain European buyers persist in their purchases of Russian oil while waiting for the point of no return of European sanctions taking place next November. Moscow no longer bothers to offer discounts ? which were massive during the winter in order to attract new customers ? as the country now seems sure of its trajectory. True the context is globally very tense in terms of energy supply from which Russian leaders benefit greatly. To achieve this, Russian exporters can count on the emergence of new ?traders? based in the Middle East and in certain Asian co...