Title: Is Russia’s fuel crisis a temporary squeeze or the collapse of an industry?
Post by: RE on Sep 01, 2026, 02:58 AM
Post by: RE on Sep 01, 2026, 02:58 AM
Is Russia’s fuel crisis a temporary squeeze or the collapse of an industry?
Russia began preparing to launch massive strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure following a deadly missile attack near Kyiv that killed 38 people. Ukraine faces critical air defense shortages and warns of an exceptionally harsh winter due to potential sustained power grid attacks as the conflict intensifies.
In the old chats about Peak Oil, the focus was nearly always on how much Oil was actually left to be extracted. Sometimes it was a bit more refined, considering the EROEI and how much would actually be profitable to extract. Rarely if ever however was it discussed how War would impact the infrastructure and make maintaining all the infrastructure necessary difficult and even impossible if the wars became too widespread. At the very least, it's already making it much more expensive.
Globally at the moment saying the Oil industry has collapsed would be a gross overstatement. In Mother Russia though, it's pretty fair to say that it is in the process of collapsing. A significanr portion of its refining, pipeline and shipping fleet has been damaged or taken offline. Even if the war with Ukraine ended tomorrow, it will take years to recover and the expense of rebuilding will be enormous. It's doubtful they'll ever be able to return to the pre-war levels of production and export.
This is probably also true in many of the OPEC countries in MENA, and globally it will be interesting to see how much Oil will have been produced in 2026 when the final numbers come in. This will take a while though. The thing is, these battles have only just begun, so one can expect more to come in the future.
Has the industry collapsed yet? No, but it's certainly on the way and the process is being speeded up tremendously by the wars over who gets how much of it and who profits from it.
RE