Outlook for Russia’s oil and gas production and exports
Oil and gas revenues have underpinned the Russian economy for decades. As a result, they are an obvious target for sanctions from countries wishing to punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, the impact of hydrocarbons from Russia on the world energy market is so significant that politicians have often hesitated to undermine them too significantly, fearing the price impact. In this report, which has been supported by UKERC, we look at the impact of sanctions on Russian oil and gas production and exports and assess the outlook for both in terms of overall volumes and direction of flows. In addition, we also analyse how the Russian economy has been affected by reduced export revenues and consider what the future implications might be. We conclude that the Russian oil and gas industry is certainly not on the point of collapse, although it has been affected by technological and commercial sanctions. Furthermore, although the Russian economy is hardly booming, it has proved remarkably resilient to the change in hydrocarbon exports caused by sanctions and in the scenarios we envisage it is likely to continue to be so for some time.
