What is your point?
So what that Russia has lots of natural gas?
Belgium has lots of liqueur-filled candies.
The Germans have lots of brown coal.
The Swiss have lots of cuckoo clocks.
Sweden has lots of particle-board furniture that no one can figure out how to assemble with their stupid "no-text" instructions.
So what?
If embargos are imposed upon the Russians... If their hitherto major customers are no longer buying from them... Then they can just sit on all that natural gas for as long as they like.
If financial sanctions are imposed upon them, then they will have difficulty effecting financial transactions and/or getting paid for the goods they can dump onto secondary markets and sell at cut-rate prices.
The Russian growth figure cited here is obviously a fantasy number.
Russia has lost 300,000 young men in the past 18 months.
300,000 men in their prime productive years have thus been "subtracted" from the Russian economy / workforce.
Many more have otherwise "left" the Russian economy. Russia is suffering an unprecedented "Brain Drain." It's brightest minds are turning their backs on their homeland and seeking a life elsewhere.
We have chosen the wrong enemy.
Incorrect! We didn't "choose" an enemy. The Russians are the aggressors here. Their actions in this war of conquest are totally incommensurate with any possible previous slights they may have perceived against ethnic Russians in border regions.
Russia has more nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at America's heartland than any other hostile force in the world. In contrast, the Ukrainians have done nothing to warrant declaring them an enemy of the United States.
Regards,
We all are playing the same MAD game with them. Who will blink first?
Here's an historical. time-presented graphic.
I’m going to do you a favor.
Here is a link for you of the broadest and generally most important information you will ever download. It is the annual spreadsheet of the World Energy Statistical Report, produced each year for 72 yrs by BP and now spun off to a proxy.
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/resources-and-data-downloads
The third selection . . . the .XSLX file, is what you want. The spreadsheet is tabbed for Reserves, Production AND Consumption oil, natgas (separate tabs for LNG and total), coal, nuclear and other items for each country of the world. It will open in whatever you use for Spreadsheets, and if you don’t use anything, go download the free Open Office suite. It has an Excel (spreadsheet) reader.
Global consumption of natural gas last year was 3.9 Trillion cubic meters. It was a northern hemisphere warm winter, and the world was still emerging from effects of the virus. Over longer periods (2012-2022) the increase in consumption has been about 2% / year.
This is the period of shale. Reserves have grown by that much. The shale bonanza is on its way out — and note that in the world of Reserves, an elevation of price leads to a declaration of more, whether there is any exploration or discovery at all.
Global consumption as noted is 3.9 trillion cubic meters/year. The US produces about 1, and consumes 0.88 TCM of that each year. The US is not going to replace Russia gas.
There is not going to be any new source of gas for consumers to replace Russia. It’s not choice. It doesn’t exist. There is no choice. It’s air. You breathe or you die.
As for prices, they are a substance created from nothingness by the Fed and Central Banks around the world. Ask yourself where money comes from. That’s where. Nothingness. And unlike in Soviet times, during which the Soviet central bank was constrained in money creation to the 5 year Interior Ministry plan, the current Russian Central Bank has no such restriction. They can QE just as the Fed has QE’ed.
They have the gas and oil. There is nothing anyone can do about that. God did not favor them. The US had lots of it, too. And burned it. All you have to have is a world that does not need gas and oil and you can undercut the inevitable dominance of Russia. That’s all you need. But we don’t have that. Likely never will.
We chose the wrong enemy. We ignore Saudi Arabia cutting people’s heads off. We could have ignored Russia governing Ukraine.