{"id":11458,"date":"2022-12-16T15:10:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T15:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/2022\/12\/pv\/"},"modified":"2024-11-20T22:00:12","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T19:00:12","slug":"russias-great-energy-power-profile-is-curtailed-for-good-pavel-k-baev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/2022\/12\/russias-great-energy-power-profile-is-curtailed-for-good-pavel-k-baev\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s Great Energy Power Profile is Curtailed, For Good – Pavel K. Baev"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Only a year ago,\nRussia was perceived by its many neighbors as both a superior military power\nand a peerless energy power, the former ensured by massive investments in\nmodernizing the armed forces, and the latter \u2013 by huge export of every energy source,\nfrom coal to nuclear plants. Presently, however, those perceptions are\nundergoing serious corrections. The Russian army failed to deliver a decisive\ndefeat to the technically inferior but highly motivated Ukrainian forces, experienced\nseveral humiliating setbacks, and is stuck in frozen trenches suffering from\ndreadfully poor logistics. While this unstable stalemated continues, Russian energy\npositions are steadily undermined and the instruments that Moscow used to wield\nwith skill and confidence \u2013 like the cuts in oil and gas supply to Europe \u2013 are\nbackfiring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winter has arrived\nto Europe, but against President Vladimir Putin\u2019s expectations, there are no\nsigns of eroding political unity, and Germany has recently pledged additional\n50 million euro<\/a> in winter support for\nUkraine. Storages for natural gas are full\nas never before<\/a>, and the mild weather in\nNovember made it possible to start using these reserves later than usual, so the\nthreat\nof freezing<\/a> eagerly amplified by\nRussian propaganda is effectively minimized. Prices on gas for households and\nindustry keep fluctuating, and the debates on enforcing a price\ncap<\/a> has proven to be more divisive than the\nEU bureaucracy can manage, but there is hardly any consolation for Moscow in\nthis discord. Gazprom has lost its reputation of reliable supplier and most of\nits share on the lucrative European market, and has to resort to significant production\ncuts<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no way for\nRussia to redirect the gas flow from the European market anywhere else, and the\nproposition for organizing\nin Turkey a gas hub<\/a>, which Putin advanced in\nOctober and discussed again in the phone conversation<\/a>\nwith President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on December 11, may appear interesting, but\nthe implementation is certain to take more time than Gazprom has at its\ndisposal in the current crisis. Similarly, the plan for establishing a trilateral\n\u201cgas alliance\u201d with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which Putin surprised President Kassym-Jomart\nTokayev with in late November, is a rather far-fetched idea with dubious\nrationale. Russia may be interested in increasing gas export to Iran, and\nUzbekistan is currently experiencing energy shortages, but it\nis not keen at all<\/a> to explore this\nproposition, Turkmenistan is hardly going to join any such alliance.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dynamics on\nthe oil market is even less positive for Russia, as the EU has moved forward\nwith the decision\nto stop<\/a> all import of Russian oil delivered\nby sea and is set to ban import of refined petroleum products from February 5,\n2023. Many experts predicted turmoil on oil markets caused by the enforcement\nof this ban together with the price\ncap<\/a> on sea-transported Russian oil set by the\nUS and its coalition partners on the moderate level of $US 60 per barrel. Putin\nwas outraged with this sanction and instructed the government to develop\ncounter-measures that would cancel the cap; the ministers are\nstill working<\/a> on a meaningful plan,\nbut the market has remained unperturbed, and the price on the Urals blend has\nslipped to $US 50 per barrel. Russian companies have managed to increase oil\nshipment to India<\/a>, but only at a significant\ndiscount, and this short-term opportunity cannot compensate for the losses in\nthe traditional European destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oil market will\ncertainly experience much volatility in the months to come as the predictions\nof shifts in demand\nfrom China<\/a> are swinging widely. What\nmatters for Russia, however, is that its energy policy decision-making makes\ndiminishing impact on this oscillating supply-demand balance. Moscow hoped to\nreinforce this impact by closer cooperation with Saudi Arabia in the OPEC+\nformat, and the controversial\nagreement<\/a> in October to cut down oil\nproduction quotas appeared to answer those hopes. The disappointment came in December,\nwhen the cartel opted not\nto make further cuts<\/a>, leaving Russia quite\nunable to deliver on its quota. Saudi Arabia may not like the precedent of\nenforcing the price cap, but it likes the pattern of expanding\nmilitary cooperation<\/a> between Russia and Iran\neven less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond these\ncurrent developments lurks the prospect that Moscow may not be able to\ntranslate its energy might into political influence in any foreseeable future.\nEurope is moving faster than it planned with reducing energy imports from\nRussia to a minimum, and other customers learn to take advantage of Moscow\u2019s\ndesperate need to sell its oil and gas. Gazprom and Rosneft are compelled to\nexecute production cuts, and shutting down productive assets for the winter\nmeans that the wells may never be rehabilitated. Russia possesses unique\nreserves of gas and considerable \u2013 of oil, but turning them into instruments of\npolicy will be quite impossible for any future Russian leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pavel K. Baev, Dr., Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Pavel K. Baev is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution (Washington D.C.), Senior Associate Researcher at the Institut Fran\u00e7ais des Relations Internationales(IFRI, Paris), and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI, Milan). His research interests include the transformation of the Russian military, the energy and security dimensions of the Russian-European relations, Russia\u2019s Arctic policy, Russia-China partnership, post-Soviet conflict management in the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, and Russia\u2019s Middle East policy, which is supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. He writes a weekly column in Eurasia Daily Monitor<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To cite this work:<\/strong> Pavel K. Baev, Russia\u2019s great energy power profile is curtailed, for good\u201d, Panorama<\/em>, Online, 16 December 2022, https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/blog\/2022\/12\/16\/pb-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright@UIKPanorama.<\/em> All on-line and print rights reserved. Opinions expressed in works published by the Panorama<\/em> belongs to the authors alone unless otherwise stated, and do not imply endorsement by the IRCT, Global Academy, or the Editors\/Editorial Board of Panorama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only a year ago, Russia was perceived by its many neighbors as both a superior military power and a peerless energy power, the former ensured by massive investments in modernizing the armed forces, and the latter \u2013 by huge export of every energy source, from coal to nuclear plants. Presently, however, those perceptions are undergoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":9769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,486,507],"tags":[607,608,656,706,760,621,644],"class_list":["post-11458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crisis-in-ukraine","category-opinion","category-russia","tag-bali","tag-energy-environment-resources","tag-english","tag-g20-en","tag-putin-en","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}