Exxon-Mobil just announced that they're pulling out of Russia. Which does make me wonder - how capable are the Russians of keeping their current oil and gas extraction industry going without western finance and expertise? I know that Russian wells have been increasingly difficult to run over the last two decades but I wonder to what degree western capital has been relied on to keep things going...
I legitimately don't have an answer to this question. Will be interesting to see.
It'll be a heavy blow, but not insurmountable to recover from. The real problem Russia's facing is that it's running out of countries to export to. Central Asian nations like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are all rich in hydrocarbons, minerals, and agricultral output and have absolutely no need for Russian exports. Russia still has support from OPEC countries, but Russia's a petrostate to begin with; what meaningful support can the KSA, UAE, Qatar, or Bahrain provide when they're all trying to sell the same products? Iran's chief exports are hydrocarbons to begin with, so they're not an option either. Venezuela isn't an option either because again: floundering petrostate, but this time on the other side of the world. Mongolia is a
potential partner, but they've got a huge chip on their shoulder for being a Soviet satellite state during the Cold War. They don't like either Russia or China, so they try to play a balancing act between the two. Brazil seems like the only BRICS nation that would gladly support Russia, but logistical challenges are hard to overcome and again: if Brazil was really
that strapped for hydrocarbons, they could just buy from Venezuela instead.
India, China, and Iran would still be big partners, to name a few.
India isn't a reliable partner. India buys a shitload of military equipment from Russia, but that consideration is no longer on the table because of all the sanctions that have been levied against Russia's technology sector. I've touched upon this in a previous post, but India also
doesn't have as deep of a friendship with Russia as you might think. During the Cold War, they were firmly on the side of Yugoslavia as a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement. They accepted Soviet aid, but that all went down the shitter once Indira Gandhi died and the Indian economy began to liberalise toward the late 80s/early 90s. Furthermore, why would India invest heavily into infrastructure meant to transport LNG and oil from the Caspian Sea when they can just as easily buy hydrocarbons from the KSA, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, or even Iran? They're all geographically closer and the infrastructure to transport hydrocarbons from the Gulf to India already exists.
China and Russia's partnership runs deep, but they still keep one another at arm's length. Russia fears Chinese encroachment into Central Asia through the Belt & Road Initiative and more to the point: China's been eyeing Vladivostok as "historically Chinese" territory. Even more importantly, the infrastructure to transport vast quantities of hydrocarbons on the scale necessary to replace Western partners doesn't exist (to my knowledge, anyway). Even if China and Russia went ahead with trade deals for precious metals and wheat, Russia's chief export of hydrocarbons wouldn't be feasible for the Chinese to go after until the infrastructure (i.e. pipelines, refineries, terminals) is fully built and operational. To get all of that built and operational would take years, if not decades to match the scale that Russia has in the West.
As for Iran, they're a petrostate too so it's not like Russia will make any decent money off of them. Similarly, Russian military hardware doesn't really have a market in Iran to my knowledge because the Iranians have a robust military industrial complex of their own. Also, Iran competes with Russia in the same spheres of influence that they share: namely, the Caucasus and Central Asia because they too were once historically Iranian territory.
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