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If Russia shut off its oil and gas to Europe the entire continent would be in recession in a matter of weeks if not months. Sure it would hurt russias economy as well,but if this were REALLY a war that either side really wanted and believed it, this is what would be going on.. this is just a farce on every level.

Russia and the rest of Europe are not at war, which is why what is happening between them doesn't look like war. Essentially, that relationship regressing back to a Cold War state of watchful coexistence and economic separation.

You are correct that both sides have economic reasons not to cut off relations completely, but trade -- including energy - has indeed dropped substantially. Europe is going to gradually wean itself off Russian energy entirely, but it isn't going to happen overnight unless there is a massive shooting war.

In any case, energy is a global market. If Russia decided to stop sending all energy to Europe and sell to someone else instead, other suppliers would fill in the gap. It would be moderately painful for a period, but it eventually would resolve itself.

That's the smartest move for Europe, and even Trump opposed Europe becoming dependent on Russian energy. So that would be a positive development.

Other suppliers cannot “FILL THE GAP”, at least not in any quick way.

If the pipelines from and through russia suddenly shut off, Europe could not get enough oil imported from other sources to fill the gap in any reasonable timeline.

Europe brought in 49.5bn cubic metres (bcm) of Russian gas through pipelines, and a further 24.2bcm in cold liquid form on ships, according to Fähnrich. Some of the LNG will have been resold to other countries in 2024.

65bcm isn’t going to showup in Europe from other sources overnight... and thats just LNG, thats not other energy.

EU uses about 320bcm per year. Meaning about 20% of the entire contintents LGN comes from Russia... That’s not showing up overnight or quickly from anywhere else in the world. Eventually yes, EU can get it from elsewhere.. but it sure won’t be showing up quickly.

To put this in perspective, the entire worlds shipping of LGN by boat in 2023 was 400M Metric Tones... or about 544BCM .

So to replace Russias contribution would mean that more than 10% of the entire volume of LGN shipped by boat would need to go EU on top of what its already importing.

You would need at least 10-12% more ships hauling LNG to even begin to cover replacing what Russia is providing the EU... lead time on building a tanker vessle is over 2 years.

Even if you could find the supplier who could make up the difference, you couldn’t get it enough ships to move it for years.

Oh sure EU could pay more, and redirect LGN bound for other markets I suppose, but reality is, that 12% isn’t going to just magically appear overnight.

This is just a joke, the whole thing is a joke.