Will Russia Survive The Coming Energy Transition?
Russia has a resource problem at its hands for sure. But it’s not the Energiewende or any other Green program that’s causing it or even making it worse. Contrary what some tend to believe the Energiewende increases the need for quick load balancing for those renewable and fickle sources so that makes the day of Natural Gas which Russia is a big exporter of. Clean energy makes Russias day – Putin sure loves that. There is a much bigger threat for Russia on the horizon though. Russia needs new reserves. Luckily it has a lot of untapped oil and gas. However its in pretty hard to reach places and therefore costs a pretty penny to develop. Many shale fields are already a lot cheaper to develop. History has not been kind to those that have the more expensive to develop resources. Don’t expect every last drop of Russian oil to be extracted. Far from it.
A new global energy reality is emerging. The era of the hydrocarbon – which propelled mankind through the second stage of the industrial revolution, beyond coal and into outer space – is drawing to a close. The stone age ended not because we ran out of stones. The same with oil and gas.
