The sudden rise in world oil prices, due not to increased global demand but to the massive drop in global supply, comes as a windfall welcomed by Russia. Not only were the Americans finding it uneconomic to work their shale deposits at low oil prices and reduced demand, but now the Biden administration has sent a clear message that it discourages the exploitation of all fossil fuels. The abrupt cancellation of the Canadian pipeline on spurious grounds sent a clear message to domestic oil producers in North America. And OPEC is determined to cut supply to sustain the rise in prices.

The Russians are too old fashioned to pay much attention to the bleating of the British ambassador for co-operation to defeat what she believes – against the patent evidence outside her window of this winter’s massive snowfall in Russia, Central Europe and the United States – to be “global warming.”

Now, instead of a shortfall in foreign exchange from oil sales suffered in 2020, Vzglyad. ru suggests, the Russians are now anticipating oil at $80 a barrel. This means a healthy surplus from sales of oil alone at several trillion dollars for 2021. Of course, as one reader points out, it is not the Russians who benefit, but the Russian state – a petrodollar régime par excellence. Meanwhile China, oblivious to the Western obsession with carbon dioxide, is producing more coal than ever to provide fuel for its environmentally friendly electric cars, for which it also destroys the environment mining for rare metals needed to build the vehicles.

America’s alienation of the Saudis and its desperate attempt to appease Teheran obviously also underpin Moscow’s ties with Riyadh. What goes around, comes around; a fact which Biden, Blinken and Kerry have evidently yet to comprehend.

Внезапная стратегия ОПЕК принесла России двойную выгоду

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7 марта 2021, 10:18 Фото: Jim West/imageBROKER.com/Global Look Press Текст: Ольга Самофалова