Hmmm, so the long and short of it is that Russia has lots of oil. Maybe China will reclaim some of its Siberian provinces, given the South China sea adventure is getting resistance (this President is not an incompetent coward).

The article has its moments but is of limited use, even for those interested in the future of oil in Russia. Sure oil exploration has fallen off in Russia because, guess what, prices are down and there is a glut. I saw one article in the past week or so which pointed out that most of America's fracking companies are running at a loss (no one's quite sure why). Oil companies are not going to commit to the enormous investment of conventional wells, when frackers with different cost structures are pumping it out. As for reserve estimates falling it was my understanding the reserve calculations are tied to price (only oil that can be economically recovered is counted). so we're back to the same basic point. Prices are down. The rest doesn't matter.

As long as Russia has some coastline and nuclear science, never!

Why even biogas produced in onsite digesters, consuming biological waste, the methane produced can be scrubbed then catalytically converted to methanol or a diesel substitute!

Last but not least is the heat assisted catalytically decomposing of H2o to produce copious and cheap hydrogen and oxygen!

Oxygen and lithium holding promise as possibly batteries with enough range to successfully compete with conventional fuel for range?

The problem for an export dependant Russia, is how far are other nations advanced toward these alternatives, which along with molten salt thorium reactors, could make recovering Russian oil or gas totally uneconomical or a zero sum game!

Simply put and with regard to all the alternatives, if you can't beat em join em: or better yet, lead! Russia is not short of very clever people!
Alan B.

Curmudgeon,

As usual you have those blinkers on again.

what we are currently experiencing globally, is demand destruction in the oil industry, primarily caused by ever increasing per-capita debt burden, particularly in the western world.

Unconventional oil production is pretty much a giant Ponzi scheme with producers tapping an ever shrinking line of credit just to remain solvent. All of this will inevitably end badly for all.

We are in a global debt trap with a falling middle class, increasing retirement boomer spending impact, wage stagnation and decline, stock market over valuation and P/E insanity, falling global trade (take a look at the Baltic Dry Index) and too many other blatantly obvious signs of a global financial and social collapse in the making, it won't matter a damn what the price of oil is or what a particular countries production rates mean. The end result will still be the same.

The writing is jumping off the wall, but being a welded on mouthpiece from the tradional school of journalism, I doubt you would even begin to understand what is really going on in the real world.

This is all going to end very badly and it is sad to see our pathetic politicians spruiking the same tired old mantra as the main stream media. It's not just fake news, call it what it really is, Bullsh:t.

Geoff

Add to all that and the low profits of the major oil companies and
Shell talking about planning for getting out of the oil industry and concentrating on gas.